William Flew Reprinting
The growing trend for the rich and famous to protect their privacy through injunctions came under sustained attack last week from online activists battling for the public’s right to know.
If you want to know the sex secrets that celebrities are trying to hide, go online and take a look at — oops, hang on a minute. Names and lurid allegations are there for anyone to see, but if we tell you precisely where to look, we will be breaking the law. Let us just say that with a little online searching you can find out about some of the celebs who have taken out socalled “super-injunctions”.
There is a TV personality whose alleged behaviour was detailed in three tweets posted by one Twitter user last week; then there is a well-known chef; a comedian who allegedly enjoys a gag or two, not necessarily of the funny kind; and an actor or three.
Various footballers and business executives have also been named as using the law to prevent information about them being published.
Some of the details have been floating around cyberspace and in dinner-party chatter for a while. Now, however, for the first time, there appears to be a deliberate campaign to defy the injunctions and bring down the system. As one law professor put it: “It’s civil disobedience.”
When an anonymous poster revealed names and details last Sunday, it provoked a Twitter storm as tens of thousands of users exchanged links to the supposedly verboten information. Traffic on the site leapt by 14%, and that was far from the end of it.
Three days later, two more lists of forbidden information surfaced. Late on Friday a fourth list, with new names and allegations, appeared.
A week on from the first revelations, lawyers for the super-injunction celebs appear to be impotent to stop the allegations surfacing. What are they going to do: sue thousands of Twitter users? Tell the US, where Twitter is based, to abandon free speech and censor cyberspace? Unlikely.
Mark Stephens, a leading media lawyer, goes further: “As far as I am aware, the courts have taken no action to enforce the injunctions that are being so flagrantly breached.
“These people are thumbing their nose at the court. The message is that anyone can [breach injunctions] with impunity. It is sending a very troubling message that people don’t have to abide by court orders, which is of course entirely wrong.”
As if to ram the point home, a British blogger raised the stakes on Friday. The man, who lives in Hull, published on his website a draconian injunction involving a wealthy family who are not celebrities. The document was supposed to be confidential and to keep secret the names of the parties involved.
The blogger declared that the law is an ass and told The Sunday Times: “ Someone described what I’ve done as historic. Maybe. I didn’t really think about it.”
Though he risks prosecution, he said: “Obviously I’m worried, but I think justice should manifestly be seen to be done. It is either out in the open or it is closed.”
By yesterday, 8,000 people had read the super-injunction on his site and many more may have been sent links to it.
Transparency or intrusion: either way, the present online challenges raise awkward questions about privacy and the law. Who is leaking the injunctions? Should the law be changed? And can anything be kept truly private in the age of the internet?
Super-injunctions are simply injunctions with special terms: they forbid any mention that the injunction even exists. Other injunctions, which simply forbid mention of the individuals concerned, are not strictly “super”.
Both types have proliferated since a right to privacy was enshrined in law in 2000. That right has been welcomed by celebrities such as the actor Hugh Grant, who said: “I think a very basic human right is a right to privacy . . . it doesn’t feel right that just because you have had a bit of success one of your basic human rights is removed from you.
“It is fabulous that people can now go to a judge and stop things being printed,” he added.
On the other hand, most people thought it was less than fabulous when lawyers for Trafigura, an international company, tried to use a super-injunction to stop even MPs talking about how it had arranged to dump toxic waste in Africa.
How many super-injunctions are in force? It is like catch-22: you cannot know for sure because they are secret — but even if you did know, you could not say.
When such Orwellian orders began to be discussed in the press, people naturally became curious. Soon the term superinjunction was being widely used for other injunctions, too, and rumours became rife on the internet, including Twitter.
Last Sunday, a Twitter user — let us call them IST — set up a new account designed to be noticed by people interested in the subject. In the space of a few minutes, IST posted six tweets claiming to give details of celebrities’ super-injunctions and what they are trying to hide.
IST also “followed” or tagged five other Twitter users, who had all recently tweeted about super-injunctions. By doing so, he or she hoped to draw attention to the illegal posts. IST then promptly went silent.
News of what he had posted was soon being passed on. IST had also included at least one error, deliberately or otherwise, in the list of supposed secrets. He claimed that Jeremy Clarkson had obtained an injunction to prevent publication of intimate pictures of him with Jemima Khan.
It was not just false. Khan, endowed with the elegance of a Jaguar, was aghast at being accused of colliding with an old Trabant like Clarkson. She promptly told her 66,000 Twitter followers that the claim was not true — which in turn propelled more people to look at the original allegations. It also led to the story being reported in the mainstream media.
By yesterday, more than 110,000 people had actively linked as “followers” to IST’s Twitter account. At first, rumours circulated that a junior newspaper journalist had leaked information on the injunctions. Some lawyers suggested that newspapers were making a pre-emptive strike because they feared Max Mosley, the former Formula One boss, was about to win a judgment on privacy in the European Court.
As it turned out, Mosley, who successfully sued a newspaper that reported his participation in a sadomasochistic party with prostitutes, lost his case. The Sun noted the judgment under the headline: “Mosley takes a proper spanking”.
Ian Hislop, the editor of Private Eye, also heard rumours a journalist might be responsible. “One theory put to me was that it was someone working for the Mail or the Telegraph, so they could put Clarkson on the front page,” he said. “It’s a very good conspiracy story, but I have no idea whether it is true or not.” IN AN effort to unearth the perpetrator, The Sunday Times tracked down Twitter users who had taken a close interest in the activities of IST. One, let us call him MB ( again, he cannot be identified for legal reasons), denied posting the material or being any form of journalist; instead, he made it clear he was simply concerned about super-injunctions limiting free speech in traditional media, but not online.
“ One [ celebrity with an injunction] was even named by a very well-known blogger in a tweet to a famous newscaster,” he said. “Nothing was done about it.”
Another Twitter user, let us call him DW, runs a waspish celebrity blog that pushes the bounds on privacy. He, too, denied breaking any injunctions, but said the current situation was absurd.
He pointed out that Imogen Thomas, a Big Brother contestant, had been named as having an affair with a wellknown footballer, but an injunction prevents him being identified. Yet the man’s name is now circulating online. As DW put it: “When you tell a person you know a secret but you can’t share it, they go insane. That’s what’s happened here, on a massive scale.”
A third Twitter user, let us call him JB, also denied he was the mystery poster, but admitted he had set up an account on May 6 to highlight freedom of speech. JB told The Sunday Times: “Twitter should be used to shred the secrecy that I find so appalling.
“I was hoping that with the combined efforts of myself and a few other interested parties on Twitter, these injunctions would be rendered unworkable. I’m very excited that seems to have happened.”
Celebrities, the rich and their lawyers do not agree.
On Friday, yet another footballer obtained a “ privacy injunction”. Though the cost of such orders can be as much as £50,000, there are thought to be as many as 180 in existence, according to a leading lawyer. (The Daily Telegraph yesterday suggested there were 80). Most are not widely known about, he says. They are said to include 12 proper “super-injunctions” that ban the media from referring to their existence.
All apply to internet publications just as much as printed ones, and last week a judge delivering an injunction went out of his way to make clear that it applied to Twitter and Facebook.
A committee set up by the Master of the Rolls will report this week on injunctions, and may reiterate this point and clarify how they should be used. However, a key issue, beyond when and where injunctions should be allowable, is whether they can be enforced.
Newspapers have readily identifiable offices and staff who can be easily arrested fined and slung in jail. Twitter users, however, can be anywhere, including countries beyond the jurisdiction of the UK courts
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