I am a sarcastic cow, I am used to being a sarcastic cow and I am comfortable being a sarcastic cow. When the time comes to simply recommend an article in the Guardian my non-sarcastic mooing sounds all funny in my own ears. But, here goes: I recommend you read ‘Freedom of information is for businesses too’ by Heather Brooke.
A request by tobacco giant Philip Morris International has reignited concern about the use of freedom of information laws. The data it was interested in was collected as part of a survey of teenagers and smoking carried out by the university’s Centre for Tobacco Control Research.
The UK’s FoI law is meant to be applicant blind. This means anyone can ask a public body for official information and there should be no discrimination based on the identity of the person asking. In the case of scientific research conducted and funded in the public’s name, there is a strong argument that the underlying data and methodology should be disclosed. It is precisely this transparency that grants research reports their status as robust investigations.
Several FoI officers complain it’s unfair to the taxpayer to provide such data to a rich company like Philip Morris.
Amazing how the “free lunch” trait highlighted by a recent Samizdata article is all too prevalent amongst the leftist elements; that somehow “companies” are separate entities from “people” and “taxpayers”.
I’m sure Philip Morris (the company) and all it’s employees pay tax, in fact, rich companies tend to pay more tax even with the avoidance schemes they employ.
So they’ve as much right to the data as any other taxpayer.
They shouldn’t even have to ask for this kind of thing. A publicly funded University should put all that stuff on the internet as a matter of routine. Its not like the data isn’t stored on some computer during the normal course of research anyway.
Now as far as the MI6 or whatever the UKs version of the CIA is. Ok, maybe they should have to ask.
The bit of the article that really stands out for me: “researchers will feel inhibited or endangered if forced to reveal their methodology or primary data”
That’s what science is all about: “Here is what I did.” If I did it right, someone else will be able to reproduce and verify it. Hiding methodologies and data is not science. When I was in research, I was happy to send out any information anyone wanted. Such requests proved that your research was being read and used!
Incorportion is in itself a state sponsored fakery to evade justified risk.
I saw some bloke from Sterling University bleating about this on the news last night. He apparently was outraged (Huh?). He also said that Phillip Morris would never be allowed to do such research themselves. Really? Why ever not?
Phillip Morris obviously want the data to find out if it is as Mickey Mouse as it sounds, or just plain made up, and yes why shouldn’t they have it? They don’t want names and addresses, just the facts.
And if we are in the mood for fainting, George Monbiot has a good article in the Guardian too, on a related access to information matter…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/aug/29/academic-publishers-murdoch-socialist?INTCMP=SRCH
Oft repeated nonsense. Incorporated entities have often existed without state sponsorship.
Of course they exist to manage (i.e. limit) risk and even in stateless libertopia people will incorporate to limit their liability to customers.
I can imagine that in a stateless utopia one might incorporate so as to limit liability to customers – ie by making sure that all your contracts established that your contracting partners had recourse only to the assets of the business, or some part of it. But I don’t see how you could limit your liability in tort. Why should injured third parties accept your limitation ?
Not being terribly interested in the FOI Act, my main take from the column and its comments was various Grauny types claiming that it ought to apply to a company’s private information too. Obviously forcing a private person to divulge his private information is a serious assault on liberty (whereas forcing a government entity to do so will generally involve no such assault, unless for example the information that it is forced to divulge has itself been coerced out of private people – like tax records.)
But it does raise the difficult question of where you draw the line between public and private, in this bindweed state that gets its roots in everywhere. Some companies will be almost purely private, ie they’ll get virtually nothing from the government, indeed they’ll get taken for large sums. Others will be solidly on the government payroll. And some in between. Likewise other institutions, like universities – nominally private but getting almost all their money directly or indirectly from the state. And it isn’t purely a question of money. Companies that depend on patents and licences – are they really properly private ? Companies that get no financial subsidies at all, but which are propped up by regulations that stop competitors getting at them ? And so on. I haven’t worked out in my mind any sensible way of distinguishing private from public. Maybe the Americans, who are always worried about state sponsored religion have worked out a sensible way of drawing the line, but I haven’t.
@Natalie Solent: Interesting post, thankyou.
I thought that under US law, a corporation was a legal person, but arguably (or in reality) with more rights than a private legal person, and I thought that the same was pretty much true of UK law also.
If it’s about freedom of information, and if it’s publicly-funded information to boot, then, I wouldn’t see that the information should have to be asked for in the first place. As @steve suggests, it should be available on the Internet for anyone to download. There should be no need for the applicant to even have to declare themselves or seek approval before being allowed to access the information.
For example, in the same way, I thought any individual on the planet could use the Internet to download the excellent reports, research results and other information available from the archives of the US Government Accounting Office. It’s a goldmine of knowledge to help you to avoid reinventing wheels.
Is there something to hide in the UK or in the “public information” that makes is necessary to control what should legally (and morally) be publicly freely available information? For example, why was all that Climategate information (the stuff that was apparently hoarded and frauded by the SE Anglia Climate Research Institute) so assiduously buried away and kept from the hard light of external scrutiny (until it was leaked)? Surely, there was nothing to hide there was there? Oh, but wait…
Companies are indeed made up of people (human beings) – the employees are people, the managers are people, and (yes) the shareholders are people. Even pension funds are people – the people who get the pensions.
This is one area I have no problem with “Mitt” Romney about. He is right (and his critics, including the “libertarian left”, are wrong) about corportions.
However, governments do not like their statutes being applied impartially.
And not just the British government.
Sometimes is utterly blatent.
For example, vast numbers of birds in the United States are killed by wind turbines (just as they are in Britain).
Yet their are no prosecutions of wind turbine companies.
Yet when a few birds were killed by a pool of oil in North Dakota – the government (the Federal government) went into overdrive with a CRIMINAL (not even a civil case) prosecution of the oil company.
One law for one group of people (wind turbine company people) – a totally different law for another group of people (oil company people).
There are more “laws” than ever before, but the principles of the “rule of law” (such as law being applied impartially) are dead.