Privacy schmivacy
First Girl With A One-Track Mind, and now police blogger NightJack - both outed by the Times. What exactly does Murdoch's rag have against bloggers that makes its reporters so doggedly spiteful in its treatment of them? Quite apart from the vexed issue of whether a blogger's desire for anonymity should be legally protected, it's in no way apparent how Richard Horton's unmasking is in the public interest.
Ruling in favour of the paper by overturning the temporary injunction Horton had obtained, Justice Eady claimed his verdict was in in line with "a growing trend towards openness and transparency in such matters". Is this really the same man whose profile in the Torygraph last November described him as "defender of the nation's privacy"?
His new-found subservience to "openness and transparency" is laughable, too - since the ruling, NightJack has been deleted and with it has gone reams of insightful, honest, impassioned writing. The blog was a window looking directly into the heart of British policing, and the decision has drawn the curtain.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
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Would this be the same Justice Eady who decided that it was not in the public interest for George Galloway's role in the oil-for-food scandal to be exposed? That recently prevented Simon Singh from writing about chiropractic medicine without trial by making it impossible for him to win the case in pre-trial? That American author Rachel Ehrenfeld should not be allowed to publish a book (in America) alleging Khalid bin Mahfouz's links to terrorists, because 23 copies of it were mail-ordered to the UK? That last one sparked off a bizarrely one-sided international incident wherein the American gov't has introduced a number of laws specifically to prevent the British courts (in particular Eady) from destroying American freedom of expression.
Eady, and the English libel laws, are irretrievably broken. Scrap and rework is needed.
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