Wikileaks founder, Australian Julian Assange, thought to be sitting on a pile of unpublished classified material about Iraq and Afghanistan, has good reason to avoid the US according to the Washington Post, but spoke to a conference this week in Brussels, and has spent large chunks of time in Iceland recently.
Where Iceland's parliament, the Altingi, voted last week to task government with finding ways to increase information freedom and to make Iceland a leader in freedom of expression.The detail (in English) of what passed is a bit hard to come by but the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, or IMMI is "intended to make Iceland an attractive environment for the registration and operation of international press organizations, new media start-ups, human rights groups and internet data centers. It promises to strengthen our democracy through the power of transparency and to promote the nation's international standing and economy."
Here is the summary of what was proposed which includes protection of journalist sources, whistleblower protection, communications protection, limiting prior restraint on publication, what they call process protection, history protection, and libel tourism protection, and the creation of the Icelandic Prize for Freedom of Expression. And bringing Iceland's Freedom of Information Act into line with the Council of Europe convention and "good and modern elements in the FOI laws of Estonia, Scotland, the UK and Norway." Some of this sounds as if they are coming from behind, but here's the FOI plan:
