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Whistleblowers Fear Prosecution Under New European Trade Secrets Law (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The European Parliament is debating the Trade Secrets Protection Act critics say threatens to turn whistleblowers into criminals. The bill is aimed to protect European companies from corporate spying by their rivals in other parts of the world. But critics fear that the legislation will make it possible for corporations to define any information they do not want released as a trade secret, and then prosecute journalists or whistleblowers who release it to the public. Campaigner Martin Pigeon, from Corporate Europe Observatory in Brussels says the Trade Secrets Protection Act would have potentially criminalized the release of the Panama Papers. On the flip side, supporters of the bill say there is nothing to worry about because it contains a defense for those who release information exposing criminal wrongdoing or who are acting in the public interest. The bill will still need to be passed into law by national parliaments across the 28 nations of the EU, assuming the bill is approved by the European Parliament.
This law changes nothing. If you have something juicy or illegal to disclose, you should ALWAYS do it anonymously, because they will find a way to get back at you sooner or later.
Oh, and of course scrub any signs of the information from your equipment as soon as you've made the disclosure and deny, deny, deny, if asked about it.
Every time we're told not to worry about these things, it means that not only do they plan to abuse it beyond anything we could have imagined, but they've actually begun to do so already.
This law probably won't even get used more than once or twice over the next decade for actual protection of actual trade-secrets. It's nothing but a way to keep wrongdoings in the dark.
It probably facilitates corporate espionage for the bigger players. Steal information, and accuse smaller firms or individual developers/engineers/etc of having stolen your trade secrets.
There's no way this law will not be used in anything but draconian and tyrannical fashion.