A piece of confidential information that is important for national security.
〈英〉国家安全机密
it is a crime to disclose an official secret
Example sentencesExamples
The British government can restrict individual liberties, limit access to official secrets, and so on, in ways which would be intolerable to most Americans.
It is interesting that the attorney general's advice should still be an official secret despite the freedom of information act.
Would he be prosecuted for leaking official secrets?
As for the film, members of production team kept all information close to their hearts as if it were some official secret!
According to Article 1 of the bill, official secrets relate to all information or things relevant to state security.
He said the head of the relevant administrative unit would determine which information constituted an official secret.
The event which occurred on August 21, 1915, when an entire battalion was gone in the presence of other people, had been an official secret for over fifty years.
This woman says that the government knows who the Anthrax mailer is, but won't reveal his name because he's a former government employee who knows official secrets.
The plant Deny discovered in 1937 seems to have disappeared and the location of the one from which he took specimens has been kept an official secret.
The state imagines its citizens as untrustworthy, as objects of information, and therefore it needs official secrets in order to protect its knowledge from us, the citizens.
The RAF were so determined to keep the incident secret, they declared his two suicide notes official secrets and only allowed his mother to read one.
For four decades the location of his grave remained an official secret.
The media's role as critic, investigator, vigilant sceptic and scourge of official secrets is essential in any democracy.
The former MI5 officer, who is also challenging Mr Blair, was jailed in 2002 for revealing official secrets.
Apart from extending the protection of official secrets to include any government document, the Bill makes it easier to jail journalists or anyone else found with a leaked government document.
As a result the draconian machinery protecting official secrets is now looking increasingly unworkable; a review has been set up and reform seems inevitable.
According to its text, state action is required whenever official secrets are ‘revealed’ and thus ‘important public interests endangered.’
The case against Burrell was hardly an official secret.
Whether they also provided a significant body of intelligence remains an official secret.
I should like to emphasise with all the power at my command that this case is not primarily about national security or official secrets.