ABSTRACT
Under section 8, Crown servants and government contractors are under a duty to protect any information, document or other article, which it would be an offence to disclose under the Act. It is an offence for a Crown servant to retain an article contrary to his or her official duty, and for a government contractor to fail to comply with a request for the return or disposal of the information or document, or to fail to take such care of the information or document as ‘a person in his position may be reasonably expected to take’. It is a defence for a Crown servant to prove that he believed he was acting in accordance with his official duty and ‘had no reasonable cause to believe otherwise’.
