Canadian newspaper the National Post has been ordered by the country's Supreme Court to hand over documents to the police from a confidential source, Agence France-Presse reported. The documents dealt with allegations that a former prime minister, Jean Chretien, had been involved in a loans scandal.

The judiciary had been urged to respect promises of confidentiality given to a secret source by a journalist or editor "in appropriate circumstances," and the court recognized the public's interest in being informed of matters that would only emerge via confidential sources. However, the court ruled that the public's interest "is not absolute" and "must be balanced against other important public interests, including the investigation of crime."

"The bottom line is that no journalist can give a source a total assurance of confidentiality. All such arrangements necessarily carry an element of risk that the source's identity will eventually be revealed," AFP quoted the court as saying.

Providing a total assurance of confidentiality is exactly what Wikileaks hopes to do. The Swedish-based website publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other sources, and protects these sources' anonymity, thus providing investigative journalists with a potentially powerful resource. Tips and potential stories are fact-checked by an editorial team to ensure that they are accurate. This team also adds context, translates and promotes important leaks.

The whistle-blower site made headlines in April 2010 when it released a video showing a Reuters journalist and photographer, as well as 10 other people, being killed by gunfire from a US helicopter.

Wikileaks editor Julian Assange has also been working with Icelandic MPs in the hope of introducing legislation that would turn Iceland into a journalistic confidentiality haven, implementing some of the strongest legal protection in the world for the press and its sources. The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative was to be voted on in parliament this month.

The issue of journalistic shield laws arose recently in the US when tech-blog Gizmodo obtained a yet-to-be launched version of the iPhone and police searched and seized computers of one of the journalists. The question of protecting sources was also brought up in the UK parliament last summer.

Source: AFP