Tech giants refuse to engage with UK's military secrets board

They 'won't have anything to do with us', says former diplomat

Big US tech firms including X, Meta and Google have waved off the UK's media censorship board, which works to prevent state secrets from leaking into the public sphere.

The Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee has worked alongside traditional media publishers, like the BBC, The Times and even The Register, for years.

When it appears that media may publish details that threaten national security the committee issues a notice, known as a D-notice, asking them to voluntarily withhold those details.

The D-notice regime covers five core areas: military operations or capabilities; the disclosure of weapons systems; counter-terrorist forces or intelligence agency activities; physical property and assets; and personnel and their families who work in sensitive positions.

The DSMA and its media members have a voluntary agreement; the D-notices are not legally binding, but are rarely refused. As Politico notes, "The lingering threat of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act and the recently enacted National Security Act help lend them gravity."

One example, from 2010, was when the DSMA's predecessor body sent notices to the media just before Wikileaks published a huge cache of US government documents.

While the DSMA (and other bodies dating back to 1912) has worked with traditional media for years, it has recently also been trying to enter discussions with Big Tech firms, in an effort to control what appears on social media.

"We've been trying to break into the so-called tech giants," DSMA notice secretary and former military diplomat Geoffrey Dodds told Politico. He suggested that social media companies could monitor feeds, like they do for illegal content, and contact the DSMA if they found something related to D-notices.

The committee's efforts have so far been wasted, with Big Tech refusing to engage.

Google was formerly a DSMA media member, but left in 2013 after the Edward Snowden revelations, which alleged cooperation between Big Tech and Western intelligence agencies.

The DSMA is specifically not a government body. Nevertheless, Google felt it was unable to continue as a member "because it was too linked to government," said Dodds.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport offered to make introductions to Big Tech firms in 2018, but that was disrupted by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, DCMS' successor, has so far not reached out to do the same, and the DSMA's own efforts have not borne fruit.

"[Tech giants] won't have anything to do with us at the moment for their own reasons," said Dodds.

However, the DSMA will keep trying.

In the future, "there's probably going to be less print, just as much broadcasting, and a continued increase in social media and online [news], so we need to get into this game."