Boring fact

[fausto copy]

It’s 50 years to the day that I started employment with what is now BT.
Am I still bound by the Official Secrets Act?



Not that I ever heard any.

[Cugel]

It’s 50 years to the day that I started employment with what is now BT.
Am I still bound by the Official Secrets Act?



Not that I ever heard any.

So you claim, but I feel you should be interrogated by a Guardian journalist for reams of info that is now in the public interest.

After all, it was surprising what the civil service deemed a secret. The most mundane of everyday minor corruptions, for example, are all secrets. Should one blow a whistle to attract the attention of the regulators (ha!) to the bribes and illegal dealings between various bigwig not-so-civil servants and various "providers" of "services" from the private sector, this would need the remedies of at least MI6, Special Branch and 23 prosecutors.

Cugel

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
What a pension

[Syd]

I often wonder if Im still held to all the non-disclosure agreements I’ve signed over the years, especially as many have long since made it into production?

[Cyril Haearn]

It’s 50 years to the day that I started employment with what is now BT.
Am I still bound by the Official Secrets Act?



Not that I ever heard any.

What was on the canteen menu? What was the organisation called then? How long did you stay, or do you still work there perchance?
..
29 years ago today I went into a country that ceased to exist a few weeks later

[fausto copy]

Hi,
What a pension

I was only a lowly cable jointer for 20 years followed by a Plant Protection Officer for 19.
My salary was always well under the national average and I left after almost 40 years service, but at 55 years of age, therefore having a pension reduced by 20%.
There are things, like health, worth far more to me than money and thankfully (at the moment at least) I've got more of the former.

What was on the canteen menu? What was the organisation called then? How long did you stay, or do you still work there perchance?

The canteen menu was whatever I made to put in my butty box.
Mrs.Copy made my sandwiches once and I told her off for putting them in upside down (crusts downwards ).
She never did them again.

I started off with the GPO (God's Poor Orphans), then Post Office Telephones, then BT, finally ending up at openreach.

[Mick F]

We are ALL bound by the Official Secrets Act.
All you do in employments, is sign that you know it.

Ever been Positively Vetted?
I have a few times in the RN and been referee to speak up for others being PV'd.

Worked in communication centres, cryptography of various sorts, and a nuclear weapon or two.
I was cleared to Secret, and Secret Atomic.

[iandriver]

We are ALL
Ever been Positively Vetted?

I had to do one of those criminal record background checks so I could take venerable adults out tandem cycling.
Crikey it made me feel boring when there was nothing to report. No protest marches, drunk and incapables or anything.

[Mick F]

Same here!
Boring!
No skeletons in cupboards, no history of Marxism etc, no drink or drug problems, good bank account with no major debts, happily married with children at school ........ it was all tick-box stuff for the chap from DNSy ........... Department of Naval Security.

What they worry about, is you being blackmailed. If you declare all of your "skeletons" there's no problem and no secrets to be hidden, so nothing is blackmail-able. Tell the truth during your interviews, and all will be fine.

They ask you to provide a referee or two, plus they interview your boss (and others). So long as the stories corroborate, they're happy.

[rjb]

Mrs rjb had to sign the official secrets act for her first job as an auditor for the county council. Must have been to keep the hush money secret
I never had to sign anything despite working with enriched nuclear fuel items for my whole working life. However when i went back for a visit i had to submit my passport, bank details etc before being vetted and given clearance by the Orifice of Nuclear responsability.

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
We've all signed the paper me and my partner.
I would imagine you are bound to death?

[Mike Sales]

Don't postpeople sign the OSA?

[Psamathe]

We are ALL bound by the Official Secrets Act.
All you do in employments, is sign that you know it......

My first ever job was computer programming compiling NHS hospital statistics from what was then called HAA for what was then a Regional Health Authority. 1st day I was taken into department head's office and given a lecture about how I was bound by the Official Secrets Act; he made it clear that (as Mick says) you don't have to sign the act to be covered by it. I can't remember if I signed anything (e.g. acknowledging I'd been made aware ...) but certainly you don't (or back then didn't) have to sign to be bound.

But, I would have thought the Official Secrets Act would only cover Official Government Secrets and commercial business secrets would not be covered (information from Government works could be covered).

Later in my career I did some contracts for British Nuclear Fuels and had to be "Positively Vetted" and through that process and on-site inductions the Official Secrets Act was never mentioned. Although I was always very conservation and environmentally oriented at the time I was not a member of Greenpeace and my employer telling me I'd have to be Positively Vetted immediately prompted me to join Greenpeace (in an attempt to fail the Positive Vetting as I really didn't want to go to the various BNFL sites). Didn't work as I still got passed OK.

Ian

[NUKe]

Hi,
We've all signed the paper me and my partner.
I would imagine you are bound to death?

how come the leaders of MI5 always write there memoirs just after they leave then?

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,
We've all signed the paper me and my partner.
I would imagine you are bound to death?

how come the leaders of MI5 always write there memoirs just after they leave then?

I would imagine that if they divulge a secret (sealed as secret and not made public) they would fall foul?
Memoirs are normally about personal verbal discussions and opinions not official secrets?