The Official Secrets Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo 5 c 28) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaces the Official Secrets Act 1889. The Act was introduced in response to public alarm at reports of wide-scale espionage, some of them fomented by popular novels and plays that dramatized the threat, supposedly from Germany, at a time of a rapid naval expansion. Its provisions were extensive, with heavy penalties for any reporting or sketching of military, naval or air defence installations, or the harbouring of people suspected of gathering such intelligence.