That wouldn't make a difference here in Airstrip One - the court order can be public, but you're still not allowed to respond, or even mention it, as while it's a matter of public record, it's also secret.
There's a whole bunch of stuff like this. Turn up at a classified government site and ask to see the silos, and watch a press officer do impressive mental gymnastics.
The most hilarious example to me is that the BT Tower (originally Post Office Tower) did not use to appear on Ordnance Survey maps because its location was deemed an official secret.
In 1993, an MP finally "revealed" the location to draw attention to the idiocy by exercising parliamentary privilege and mentioning the location in parliament.
For those of you who have not been to London, or isn't aware which tower I'm talking about, this is it (note the pictures showing it in the London skyline...):
It is rather hard to miss, given that it rises 177 meters above street level in a part of London where the nearest other highrise is a 117m building about 1km away...
It also had a viewing platform and restaurant open to the public for 15 years while it was still an official secret...
The UK is quite fantastic at this. When you know about stuff like this, it puts UK comedy like Monthy Python's Dead Parrot Sketch[1] into very different perspective as a good illustration of behaviour that officialdom in the UK see as perfectly rational.
That's true. But since the BT Tower was built, the Official Secrets Act has gotten stricter, not more lenient (e.g. in the 80's the previous public interest defence was removed). That they've given up on restricting knowledge about buildings that are in plain view reduces the comedy effect somewhat, but they still have occasionally made idiotic attempts to restrict information that's already public.
E.g. in 2004, a government source leaked a document purporting to show that Bush discussed plans with Blair to bomb Al Jazeera, and eventually it got into the hands of Daily Mirror who put it on their front page.
Government officials subsequently tried to threaten the other national papers with the Official Secrets Act if they republished the information (it didn't work; the papers ignored the threats).
I'm sure the overall level of idiocy in this respect has fallen as they've come to terms with a reality where trying to restrict information like this just makes things worse, but it's not because they wouldn't like to.
For those interested, the reason the Official Secrets Act removed the public interest defence was that someone successfully used it. (Clive Ponting disclosed details of the sinking of the Belgrano, an hugely controversial action during the Falklands conflict, unanimously acquitted.)
A few years back, I was looking in a road atlas for a spot to go picnicking on the weekend with my wife, and I found a little island about 20 miles away that looked promising. On the map, it's criscrossed with charmingly-named little streets like Anderson Road, Ferry Street, etc., but when we got there, it was surrounded by a razor wire perimeter with armed guards at the gate. Looked it up on Google Earth later and all of the charming streets were lined with bunkers. According to Wikipedia: "Indian Island is a major U.S. Navy munitions handling facility..."
> It also had a viewing platform and restaurant open to the public for 15 years while it was still an official secret...
I am fairly certain I remember the BBC broadcasting the christmas morning special of the Multi Coloured Swap Shop[0] from the BT Tower at least once during the "secret" period.
I get that you're using "the silos" as something uber-secret, but note that the UK does not have (and never had) land-based nuclear weapons, so does not have any missile launching silos. The only nuclear weapon the UK has is Trident - submarine launched missiles.
>A relevant telecommunications provider who has been required under this
Part to provide assistance in giving effect to a targeted equipment interference
warrant, and any person employed for the purposes of the business of the
relevant telecommunications provider, may not, without reasonable excuse,
disclose to any person—
(a) the existence and contents of the warrant
>(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), it is, in particular, a reasonable excuse if the
disclosure is made with the permission of the person who imposed the
requirement.
So the fact that the FBI made it public is a reasonable excuse to talk about it.
The second section says:
>A person to whom a relevant notice is given, or any person employed or
engaged for the purposes of that person’s business, must not disclose the
existence and contents of the notice to any other person.
We have
>In this section “relevant notice” means—
(a) a national security notice under section 188, or
(b) a technical capability notice under section 189
while
> But a national security notice may not require the taking of any steps the main
purpose of which is to do something for which a warrant or authorisation is
required under this Act.
So the first category couldn't have included this, which required a warrant. The second category seems like it could apply (although there's some ambiguity over whether it applies to entities outside the UK which I haven't dug through), but it's for general "maintain ability to comply".
>The only steps that may be specified in a technical capability notice given to a
person are steps which the Secretary of State considers to be necessary for
securing that the person has the practical capability of providing any assistance
which the person may be required to provide in relation to any relevant
authorisation
So a specific warrant would not fall under that.
I don't see how any section that the OP refers to would apply.
You're assuming that "reasonable excuse" means what you and I might think it means - "reasonable" has a very specific meaning in UK tort law, and it doesn't mean reasonable - it means whatever a judge decides to be reasonable when put to several specific tests - so in practice that specifically means little.
It explicitly includes if the disclosure is made with permission of the person who issued it. I think if that's included, it stands to reason that the order being public would count as well. (They're obviously fine with it being disclosed, implicit permission.)
I pointed out elsewhere in this thread that the BT Tower was deemed an Official Secret for years and did not appear on maps, despite being a 177m building in Central London, standing out like a sore thumb in the middle of an area where the only other highrise, a km away, was 60m shorter. There were public tours and a restaurant for the first 15 years.
Yet disclosing its location would still have caused you to run foul of the Official Secrets Act for years.
The UK government and courts has very little sense of humour about these things and you most certainly can not in general assume that making information public even in the most blatant manner will mean that they won't still insist that the information is still legally restricted as if it is still a secret.
I gave the example to point out that the government itself have historically often very explicitly not "obviously [been] fine with it being disclosed" even when they themselves have made the information in question easily accessible, such as by plopping down a 177m tower in the middle of London and inviting people to tour it.
It remains to be seen if "reasonable excuse" as interpreted under UK law will be interpreted the way you assume it should, but assuming that making information public in one context means it should no longer be treated as secret has often been a bad bet in the UK, even when it gets totally ridiculous.
The opposite of "public" is "unreleased"—it's about whether something is known to people without clearance. Whether information comes out by being officially released or by being leaked, it still ends up "public."
The opposite of "secret", meanwhile, is "unrestricted"—it's about whether people charged to act in the country's interests (public servants, politicians, members of the military, and corporate employees who have signed contracts granting them clearances) are required to avoid mentioning it in any document or speech that would be public-accessible.
A well-known example is the content of the Edward Snowden leaks. They're also "public secrets": things civilians are allowed to talk about, but which people with clearance—having more restricted rights than regular people—are prevented from talking about to civilians.
Do note that there are good reasons for this distinction, although it can seem absurd. Things are restricted or classified in large chunks. Because of this, a part of a secret can be public (e.g. the name and purpose of a secret project), without the entire secret becoming public.
If public awareness meant declassification, you'd see a lot more still-secret information leaking out, as various people would think—since there's no "here's exactly what was leaked and what wasn't" memos that go around—that some part of the secret was leaked which wasn't, and is therefore fine to talk about.
The simplest way to avoid leaking anything else is to just go on pretending that even the first part of the secret hasn't been leaked and preventing everyone from talking about even that—so that the rest of the secret can't be socially engineered out of them.
There's a whole bunch of stuff like this. Turn up at a classified government site and ask to see the silos, and watch a press officer do impressive mental gymnastics.