Go On. Jail 30K Twitter Users.
I know who the Premiership footballer is. Chances are you do too. But he wants to do everything in his power to stop you knowing (and revealing further) that he had an affair. What a douchebag. I’m not going to reveal his identity here – I don’t care about him enough, but 5 seconds on Twitter should be enough for anyone. For that matter why not check out a whole load of front pages of national newspapers this morning before he tries to get you too, on his arrogant crusade:
A Scottish newspaper became the first mainstream British publication to identify the Premier League footballer who is attempting to prevent discussion on Twitter about his affair with the former Big Brother star Imogen Thomas. Meanwhile it was reported that a High Court judge had referred an unidentified journalist to the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, to consider a criminal prosecution for breaching a privacy injunction with a tweet about another footballer.
The move could potentially mean that criminal proceedings would be brought against 30,000 people who have broken one or other of the contested injunctions by tweeting in recent days the identities of those involved.
Good luck with that. Even libel lawfirm Carter Ruck knew they didn’t have a leg to stand on once the superinjunction protecting Trafigura from revelations they’d dumped toxic waste in Ivory Coast had been breached by tens of thousands of users on Twitter. Stopping that information was just impossible – force Twitter to filter information before it can be posted and find a competitor popping up with no such scruples; punish identifiable users and find countless more unidentifiable users publishing the protected information again and again. If this footballer had a brain he’d stop repeatedly destroying his own reputation.
Twitter Fights Wikileaks Witchhunt
Mathew Ingram makes some interesting points about Twitter’s attempts to resist the US Department of Justice’s subpoena for Wikileaks supporters’ personal information:
According to Greenwald and a report in the New York Times, the court order sent to Twitter would not have become public at all if the company had not initially refused to comply with the DoJ request and effectively forced it out into the open. Twitter should be congratulated for this (and has been by many users on Twitter since the news broke Friday night). The company didn’t have to fight for this court order to be made public; it could easily have complied with the DoJ subpoena in private.
However, the fact that Twitter is being targeted by the government is another sign of how important the network has become as a real-time publishing platform, and also of how centralized the service is — something that could spark interest in distributed and open-source alternatives such as Status.net, just as the downtime suffered by the network early last year did. It is another sign of how much we rely on networks that are controlled by a single corporate entity, as Global Voices founder Ethan Zuckerman pointed out when WikiLeaks was ejected from Amazon’s servers and had its DNS service shut down.
All of this makes it even more important that Twitter has forced the government’s attempts out into the light. One would hope that Facebook and Google — the latter of whom has talked a lot in the past about its commitment to freedom of speech, and has also taken action in China to protest that government’s digital surveillance of its citizens — would also come clean about any court orders they have received, especially when the DoJ appears determined to make a case that could easily entrap virtually anyone, up to and including reporters for the New York Times.
It’s worth reiterating that the unsealing order only happened because Twitter refused to comply with the order in secret, not not to comply with it. Very impressive that they’re not limply accepting the DoJ’s demand for information, but the matter is far from closed and all their actions have so far allowed is the users in question the ability to challenge the DoJ personally. The targeted users (and any unnamed people on other platforms) are still vulnerable to the Obama administration’s witchhunt against whistleblowers. Glenn Greenwald points out the US government’s terrible hypocrisy about whistleblowing:
The DOJ’s investigation of a member of Iceland’s Parliament — as part of an effort to intimidate anyone supporting WikiLeaks and to criminalize journalism that exposes what the U.S. Government does — is one of the most extreme acts yet in the Obama administration’s always-escalatingwar on whistleblowers, and shows how just excessive and paranoid the administration is when it comes to transparency: all this from a President who ran on a vow to have the “most transparent administration in history” and to “Protect Whistleblowers.”
He’s very right when he points out the dangers of using mass platforms like Twitter. They may be very handy, with superficial airs of confidentiality if you need it, but are potentially vulnerable to governmental use and abuse. Protest movements have used them repeatedly to organise demonstrations or in the case of dictatorships outright insurrections, but this has shown that it’s a two-way process. The war against Wikileaks continues, and the government responsible for the crimes they’ve proven tries every trick in the book to get away with them.
Twitter Joins In Wikileaks Censorship
Cross-posted from Eyeblast TV:
Twitter Suspends Wikileaks Defenders’ Profile
by Stephen Gutowski
The group responsible for “hacking” several companies which have cut ties with and services to Wikileaks as well as Sarah Palin moments ago had their twitter account suspended. The group,as identified by Scientific American, calls itself “Operation Payback” or Anon_Operation on twitter. Up until just a few minutes ago when you visited the group’s twitter profile you would see tweets from the group touting media coverage of themselves and coordinating attacks with their 11,000+ followers.
Here is a cache image of the account (click to enlarge):
However, now when you try to visit this account on twitter you instead receive a notice that the account has been suspended. Here’s what Anon_Operation looks like now (click to enlarge):
UPDATE: In case you’re wondering this group has all the hallmarks of something born out of 4Chan. The use of the term “Anon”, short for anonymous, is enough of a clue but the fact that the attacks they are using are DDoS is another clue since that is a 4Chan favorite. It might come as a surprise but this isn’t the first time they’ve gone after Sarah Palin either.
Remember during the campaign when Sarah Palin’s email account was “hacked”? That was also 4Chan. Of course that didn’t turn out to well for the main guy involved.
However, a post from Michelle Malkin on the matter gives a pretty good glimpse into the standard operating procedure for when 4Chan wants to cause trouble. It should give you some background on what you can expect. Given 4Chan’s history it’s doubtful that twitter suspending this account will really prevent them from doing more damage.
In fact this move makes me wonder if these 4Channers wont go after Twitter next. They’ll attack anybody if they rub them the wrong way or if they think its funny… even 4Chan.
UPDATE: If you needed further proof of 4Chan’s connection to “Operation Payback” here it is.
What I don’t understand is this: Twitter is comfortable with allowing rampant racism, homophobia and breaches of pornography laws. Yet with this they act -
Arrested for Joking About Stoning
A Conservative Birmingham City councillor has been arrested over allegations he called on Twitter for a female writer to be stoned to death.
Erdington councillor Gareth Compton made the remark about Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on his Twitter page.
Ms Alibhai-Brown confirmed the comments were reported to the police.
West Midlands Police said Mr Compton had been arrested under the Communications Act 2003 and bailed. Mr Compton has since apologised.
Ms Alibhai-Brown had appeared on Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show on Wednesday discussing human rights in China.
Afterwards, Mr Compton allegedly tweeted: “Can someone please stone Yasmin Alibhai-Brown to death? I shan’t tell Amnesty if you don’t. It would be a blessing, really.”
Tasteless, without question. But arrestable? Sir George Young, Leader of the House, said of Compton’s tweet:
“Stoning to death is a barbarous form of punishment which the government and I am sure every honourable member of this house deplores, and I hope that no elected person will threaten any member of our society with that sort of punishment,” he said.
As with the Paul Chambers case, who on earth could have taken this seriously? I don’t even know the guy but even in a 140-character medium it’s completely clear he was being distastefully sarcastic. Here’s something: he should be allowed to be. Did he incite racial hatred? No – he was foolish and tasteless. Who cares? Something’s gone horribly wrong in this society if on a medium like twitter you should have to add disclaimers to avoid potential arrest because you might just cause something as harmless as offence. Alibhai-Brown however appears to disagree:
Alibhai-Brown said she regarded his comments as incitement to murder.
The journalist, who writes columns for the Evening Standard and the Independent, told the Guardian: “It’s really upsetting. My teenage daughter is really upset too. It’s really scared us.
“You just don’t do this. I have a lot of threats on my life. It’s incitement. I’m going to the police – I want them to know that a law’s been broken.”
At the very least she’s being overly sensitive about this. I would be the first to go after (metaphorically, you zealots) Compton if there were any indication that this were incitement to hatred or murder, but I completely disagree with her assessment of his tweet. Dr Evan Harris said on Twitter of the case:
Look, Yasmin’s a mate but police shld not arrest people for obvious joke tweets, even if offensive
He’s right.
On Trial for Inappropriate Tweet
While the newly re-elected politicians discuss the voting system, the surveillance state continues to criminalise objectively innocent people:
A 26-year-old man will go on trial today for allegedly posting a message on Twitter threatening to blow an airport “sky high”.
Paul Chambers denied “tweeting” the message about Robin Hood Airport, in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, on January 6.
Chambers, of Byram Court, Balby, Doncaster, was arrested after the post was picked up on the social networking site by routine investigations.
He pleaded not guilty to a single charge of sending, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.
As I said after his arrest, it’s an absolute insanity that an ill-judged comment, intended only for his Twitter followers, should then be put on trial for sending a ‘malicious message’. Absolutely insane. Hopefully Allen Green is right and there’ll be a not guilty verdict or better momentarily.
UPDATE: Chambers has just been found guilty.
Arrested for a Comment on Twitter
No, I’m not joking. Someone actually made a flippant comment on twitter and got arrested for it:
When heavy snowfall threatened to scupper Paul Chambers’s travel plans, he decided to vent his frustrations on Twitter by tapping out a comment to amuse his friends. “Robin Hood airport is closed,” he wrote. “You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”
Unfortunately for Mr Chambers, the police didn’t see the funny side. A week after posting the message on the social networking site, he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned for almost seven hours by detectives who interpreted his post as a security threat. After he was released on bail, he was suspended from work pending an internal investigation, and has, he says, been banned from the Doncaster airport for life.
Sorry but WTF? When did we lose the group ability to distinguish between a credible threat and someone mouthing off – ill-advisedly sure – but obviously just mouthing off? Why waste police time investigating what I could have told them was rubbish (and I don’t even know him)? Hannah Dunleavy suggests:
While I agree it was a savage over-reaction and has undertones of something quite troubling, I wonder if they’d all be so outraged if Chambers had been a Muslim teenager from Bradford, rather than a white man. I’m sure they wouldn’t. Freedom of speech has to apply to everyone: jokes about blowing up planes cannot be the preserve of Caucasians and Christians.
I agree there’s a point there about freedom of speech needing to apply to all, but to be perfectly honest if a Muslim teenager from Bradford had said the same thing in the same context I would be equally as outraged. If a Muslim teenager from Bradford starts mouthing off Jihadist nonsense on a website known for its extremist content then by all means devote police resources to investigate what’s going on there, but to react in the same way to a stupid comment in a flustered mood by anyone mouthing off to their mates and admirers on twitter? Perspective really is needed.
Notes on #janmoir – Don’t ‘Blame’ Fry
I’ve seen a few media reports now on yesterday’s unprecedented new media revolt against the Daily Mail.
Of all of them the Huffington Post’s takes the biscuit for ‘worst take’. They reckon it’s about a fight between the Daily Mail and The Guardian. Seriously. I suspect a showbizzy intern selected their quote heavy, googled contribution.
A meme in practically all the reports is the role of Stephen Fry. This has now culminated in a Telegraph piece titled ‘Don’t laugh – Stephen Fry is giving the orders now.’
Those, like Fry, who are “deeply dippy about all things digital”, argue that the internet is the ultimate tool of democracy. But it could just be that historians – if they are so permitted – might look back on this period as the moment when the techno-savvy few seized control of the minds of the many.
The blogger Guido Fawkes seems effectively to run British politics. Ashton Kutcher – actor and tweeter with over three million followers: “life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift” – is our spiritual leader. And Fry? Well, he’s bigger than both of them.
Where to start? Iain Dale has a lot more blog traffic than Guido. Not sure what Kutcher’s in there for save to keep the ‘celeb’s rule’ idea going (and his Twitter following like that of other Hollywood celebs doesn’t seem to translate to followers automatically watching their shows). And as for Fry?
I was actually dipping in-and-out of the #janmoir Twitter stream yesterday and very, very few of the tweets were Fry Retweets. Sure, his numbers are huge but the ‘Twitosphere’ is far, far, far huger. Presumably far too huge for most journalist’s to get their minds around.
By 2010, 26 Million (1 in 7) U.S. Adults Will Use Twitter Monthly.
Edited to add: Thanks to to commentator Ian Hopkinson for pointing to some evidence.
Here’s the trendastic tracking of #janmoir
Showing it peaking at 11am – @stephenfry first tweet on #janmoir was at 12:27pm.
What the ubiquitous Fry mentions in their reports are about is a journalistic laziness and the ever-present need for a celeb mention. A real piece of good work would be to actually track #janmoir all the way from where the first rock was thrown out to the furthest reach of the ripples.
Such as the excellent American analyst Evgeny Morozov‘s tweet:
notes on the new public sphere: Twitter has shrunk the Atlantic and purely local UK scandals are now global news
That’s why HuffPost bothered putting Gately on the front page – #janmoir was number one or two trending topic when they woke up, and it had that celeb angle they love.
It’s notable that they’ve ignored what it by far the most game-changing event on Twitter this week, #trafigura – something which Gill Hornby in the Telegraph thinks is also down to Mr Fry.
From his palm-top device .. he struck a major blow for press freedom – when the Dutch company Trafigura won an order preventing the press from discussing the impact of its pollutants on the African coast, Fry tweeted the details to his vast audience and the gag was lifted.
Sigh.
Twitter Did Not Win It
Wikileaks, a site at the centre of the fightback against Trifigura and Carter-Ruck’s attempt to prevent the Guardian reporting on Jack Straw’s response to attempts to suppress the Minton Report in parliament, suggests Twitter didn’t end up saving free speech:
This ill-informed back-patting follows the dropping of a secret UK High Court gag order blocking the Guardian’s reporting of parliamentary questions by Paul Farrelly MP. Farrelly’s questions related to press freedoms and in particular, a leaked WikiLeaks report, the so-called “Minton report” which exposed a toxic dumping disaster inflicted on the Ivory Coast by oil trading giant Trafigura, which is reported to have hospitalized over 100,000 people.
However, a more substantive secret gag order against the report, granted in September, entirely prevents the reporting of its contents and remains in effect. It is not the only one. Last month, the Guardian revealed that it had been served with 10 secret gag orders—so-called “super-injunctions”— since January. In 2008, the paper was served with six. In 2007, five. Haven’t heard of these? Of course not, they are secret gag orders. The UK press has given up counting regular injunctions.
To understand the crucial events in this case, we need to go back to September when commodities giant Trafigura obtained the original “super injunction” preventing discussion of the leaked Minton report into the Ivory Coast disaster.
During September and the preceding months, investigative reporters from the Guardian, Norway’s NRK TV, the Independent, the BBC’s Newsnight, the Dutch press, Greenpeace and lawyers for the victims were collaborating to show Trafigura’s culpability.
It’s a blistering editorial, which everyone who cares about the freedom of the press and free speech in general should read as a priority. In essence the Guardian (amongst others) was hit with a gag order preventing reporting on the Minton Report on September 11th. Paul Farrelly MP was then understood to have intended his parliamentary question to draw attention to the order, given that libel laws are not applicable in the Houses of Parliament, so Carter-Ruck went for a second injunction in effect to shut him up too, and against all expectation succeeded. The Guardian made the second gag the national issue and drew the worldwide blogosphere in on its side, but Wikileaks believes the second injunction fell despite the massive Twitter intervention (the subject of earlier posts); with politicians amongst the targets it was inevitable. The lawsuits and gags in place before the attack on Farrelly remain untouched, and politicians are now largely disinterested in the subject. Free speech in the UK remains laughable, when it can be suppressed with a big enough chequebook, even over matters of vital public interest such as Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast.
The Minton Report can be found here.
Mugging the rich bastard lawyers
If the famous media gaggers, the libel law firm Carter-Ruck, scourge of Private Eye, thought they’d scored another famous victory (these guys are big on bragging) suppressing news they hadn’t reckoned with social media.
#trafigura is as I type the #1 trending topic on Twitter (that’s in the whole world). The Spectator has already broken the wall between what the blogs will say and what the print media thinks it can get away with … and many, many more people are now aware of the very story a very rich set of bastards running a polluting company is paying them – presumably – many millions to kill.
In a few hours American bloggers will start picking up on the story enmasse. What’s Carter-Ruck going to do then? As @ElrikMerlin just pointed out to me ‘this is Streisand Effect in action’ – something which I have blogged about before.
When Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov tried the same trick, and created the same effect, it generated this quote from Boris Johnson (one of those inadvertently whacked by Usmanov’s ‘take-down’ action):
We live in a world where internet communication is increasingly vital, and this is a serious erosion of free speech.
This is what Carter-Ruck did:
The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.
The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations.
This feels like another significant turning point for social media.
My updates throughout today
Nick Clegg has tweeted ‘Very interested concerned about this #trafigura / Guardian story the @LibDems are planning to take action on this’
Carter-Ruck to be Flash Mobbed.
Twitter panics over Trafigura:
Trafigura was deleted from trending topics, despite the fact it was obviously the top-trending topic. One minute it was top, the next it had vanished. Twitter’s trend explanations were also absent from any topics relating to Trafigura.
I don’t blame them, British libel laws are notorious for being swingeing, and Carter-Ruck’s efficacy in the area is well-know.
[#trafigua has now come back up trending topics]
@arusbridger #Guardian editor tweets: hoping to get into court today to challenge ban by #carterruck on reporting parliament. Watch this space
Wikileaks has updated on the report lying behind the attempted Guardian gag.
BBC finally reporting #guardiangag , fourteen hours after Guardian published.
Telegraph peeks out, surveys on #trafigura
Carter-Ruck are on Twitter (nb: could possibly be imposter). The tweets are unreal:
@carterruck is looking for a new slogan. “Defending the indefensible” #carterruckslogan
LibDems have tabled an urgent question.
The huge US liberal website Daily Kos is now onto #trafigura.
We want to put the Streisand Effect to work, and make hashtags #carterruck and especially #trafigura the top trending topics on Twitter. Please include these hashtags in your tweets of the next 24 hours.
First satirical take: Carter-Ruck successfully preserves Trafigura’s online reputation:
“We at Carter-Ruck are proud to be so effective in protecting such deserving clients, and look forward to working just as effectively for the reputations of similarly environmentally well-behaved companies around the globe,” said Carter-Ruck’s new directors of marketing George Monbiot and Julian Assange.
Guardian reports today’s legal action by them.
MP, who Guardian is currently prohibited from identifying, said he would ask the Speaker to consider taking action against Carter-Ruck for contempt of parliament.
The media lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC said Lord Denning ruled in the 1970s that “whatever comments are made in parliament” can be reported in newspapers without fear of contempt.
He said: “Four rebel MPs asked questions giving the identity of ‘Colonel B’, granted anonymity by a judge on grounds of ‘national security’. The DPP threatened the press might be prosecuted for contempt, but most published.”
The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes’s battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, “it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to”.
Ungag the Guardian twibbon campaign.
Sky News Niall Paterson blogs:
Should there be any restrictions placed on the reporting and analysis of what is said (and written) in the Palace of Westminster? I’d argue not, save perhaps for those rare occasions when national security is truly at risk.
Yet this “sensitive” question appears on the Order Paper and the answer will appear in Hansard.
Gagged? This journalist is gagging at the court’s decision.
Carter-Ruck now under attack on Google Maps
Guardian report on lifting of gag.
journalism.co.uk commentary and background on past Carter-Ruck gagging attempts.
Number Ten petition to the Prime Minister:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to enshrine in law the absolute right of the media to report the proceedings of The House in full at all times.
Plus campaign website on same set up:
Tell your MP to stand up for the media’s right to report on politicians in Westminster: e-mail them in two minutes, now.
BBC: Guardian claims victory on ‘gag’ :
Newsnight will report on this case and the prevalence of media laws being used by large companies to restrict information on Tuesday 13 October 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.
BBC media correspondent Nick Higham for BBC website, When is a secret not a secret?:
In the anarchic, anything-goes world of the internet, where freedom of speech is a frequently heard rallying cry, injunctions banning publication of anything are unpopular. This one seems to have acted like a red rag to a bull.
There is no doubt that the events of the past day have been profoundly democratic, entirely in keeping with the Bill of Rights’ sweeping away of kingly powers and its assertion of the primacy of openness among the governors of the people. In a parallel universe, attempts to muzzle parliament might be seen as treasonable – but while we’ll never have libel lawyers hearing the axe being sharpened in the Tower, the end result – a chilling effect on the silencers – is just as welcome, and welcomingly just.
Tweet from @wikileaks : Remember the UK press is STILL GAGGED from saying the toxic dumping report is on WikiLeaks HERE: http://bit.ly/v5rDJ
James Mackintosh for Financial Times, People power 1, Carter-Ruck and Trafigura 0:
Let’s hope Jack Straw, secretary of state for justice, listens: the trend towards ever-wider gagging orders gives big companies and the rich and powerful yet another way to strangle investigative journalism – as if the overly-restrictive libel and confidentiality laws were not bad enough.
Oil-trading company Trafigura knew that waste dumped in Ivory Coast in 2006 was hazardous.
Trafigura had persistently denied that the waste was harmful but internal e-mails show staff knew it was hazardous.
…
The chemical waste came from a ship called Probo Koala and in August 2006 truckload after truckload of it was illegally fly-tipped at 15 locations around Abidjan, the biggest city in Ivory Coast.In the weeks that followed the dumping, tens of thousands of people reported a range of similar symptoms, including breathing problems, sickness and diarrhoea.
Mark Pack spots an unfortunate quote being served up on the Carter-Ruck homepage and says I think Carter-Ruck might be changing this quote, don’t you?.
NBC News’ @AnnCurry tweets:
Victims of alledged toxic waste dumping by Trafigura Co. Its legal firm CarterRuck tried to stop this story: http://bit.ly/3jU0vD
Ian Douglas for the Telegraph, Context overcomes the law for Trafigura and the Guardian:
A search in Google News for Trafigura yielded the Guardian’s piece reporting the order, despite the word never being mentioned. So many people had linked to it using the name of the company that there was no need for the Guardian to break the order themselves, as the search engines determine the subject of a page by analysing those that link to it as much as the page itself.
Tweet from @BristleKRS:
Today’s twictionary words: 1: to #CarterRuck up; vb tr, to fail in exponential relationship to invoiced fee
Tory Politico is reporting that The Independent has removed a story, published on September 17, relating to Trafigura’s dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast. The story is still available through the google cache of the page.
Techpresident, The Internet as Toxic Avenger: Trafigura and the Ungagging of the Guardian:
Here you can see how the gagging of the Guardian was rapidly overwhelmed by mentions of Trafigura on Twitter, via Trendistic.
BBC Newsnight [Video], Dirty tricks and toxic waste in Ivory Coast.
Philippe Naughton for the Times, Twitter-power wins gagging victory over Carter-Ruck and Trafigura:
“Wow,” said one Twitterer among the deluge of comments. “Never heard of Trafigura before today.”
Tweet from Guardian Editor @arusbridger : Now support #Newsnight which is being sued by #Trafigura and #carterRuck over toxic waste expose http://tinyurl.com/pqf4dt
[Via PoliticsHome]: In the Commons this afternoon, Speaker John Bercow was urged to block future legal attempts to prevent the reporting of parliament, or to curtail MPs parliamentary privilege to speak freely.
Labour MP Paul Farrelly, whose question regarding Trafigura was the subject of the gag, asked Mr Bercow to investigate whether the Trafigura’s reprentatives, Carter Ruck, had acted in contempt of parliament.
Other members, including Lib Dem frontbencher David Heath and former shadow home secretary David Davis, also raised concerns.
Mr Bercow told MPs he would reflect on the matter, but insisted that the moves to gag The Guardian, which were dropped this afternoon, “in no way inhibited” parliamentary procedure.
“There is no queston of our own proceedure being in anyway inhibited. If the honorable member wants to pursue this as a matter of principle there is of couse, as he will doubtless know, an established procedure of raising it with me in writing,” he said.
#trafigura has now dropped off the top ten Twitter trending topics.
Marc Ambinder for The Atlantic Online, The Guardian Gets To Speak, But Britain Deserves A Free Press:
In practice, when compared to, well, almost every other country in the history of the world, Britain’s press has flourished. But it has done so without the type of prior right that gives the press in the U.S. its moral force. While the press cannot print anything it wants in either the U.S. or Britain, it is much easier in Britain for an entity to obtain a pre-publication injunction, or for some to win a libel lawsuit, or for parliament to bottle up debate, or for government to prevent journalists from publishing secrets. It is much harder to obtain information from the government. Still, it should be remarked that, believe or not, the Supreme Court of the United States did not formally agree that the government could not prevent the press from revealing “scandalous and defamatory” matter until 1933, in Near v. Minnesota.
It’s not so much that an expressed free press right would have resolved this dispute the right way.We’re still debating the limits of the bill of rights in this country. And in the U.K., the right to report on what someone says in parliament — or on the questions submitted to be answered by a minister of government — is already established in statute. But the existence of a constitutional right would shift the burden away from the interests with relatively less power than the state, the lawyers and the company.
Ian Reeves for Centre for Journalism, The injunction that failed, thanks to Twitter:
The digital revolution is about to lead to a legal one.
Tweet from @DistantHopes : Holy crap. Unless I miss my guess, check out how the disgraced #Trafigura literally had its name wiped from Twitscoop. [YouTube] 
Associated Press, The truth is already out there: Twitter users thwart oil company’s attempt to gag media.
LONDON (AP) — Bloggers and Twitter users thwarted a legal attempt Tuesday to stop Britain’s media from reporting the questions posed by a lawmaker in a parliamentary debate, spotlighting the power of new media to influence public policy.
Alan Brookland, My advice to Trafigura – just wait it out:
Before everyone gets too self-congratulatory, does any of this brief flirtation with online interest ever actually change anything? True, right now, lots of people who had probably never even heard of Trifigura will now be reading up on the dumping story, but, come tomorrow or next week, how many will still remember much about it? The bloggers will chalk up a victory and in this case the gagging order was actually lifted, but this is still an on-going case and nothing will have actually changed.
Sites like Twitter are excellent for catching a wave and occasionally rallying a large number of people behind a cause, but it’s yet to become the force for social change that it’s being made out to be. Real issues sadly aren’t resolved in an afternoon and a normally more complicated than 140 characters. If social media is really going to make the impact that it could, then we all need to keep an eye on the issues which we find important and persue them, not just jump on while it’s in the news and let it quietly die. Nag your MP, pester the mainstream media and ask the annoying questions, not just when the issue is in the news, but repeatedly. It’s only by proving that we can stay interested in an issue that change happens, otherwise people will just wait till the dust settles and everything will stay the same.
[PDF] The letter Index on Censorship sent to the courts in support of the Guardian.
Tweet from @pauloCanning : BBC #Radio4 news *finally (and briefly) reporting #gagcarterruck Fry gets quoted
Mike Butcher for Techcrunch, There’s nowhere to hide if your name trends on Twitter. Is there, Trafigura?
With the traditional media gagged, the new media had kicked in. That created a story which plenty of trad media outlets and blogs outside the UK could not ignore and started reporting on.
In other words, this kind of censorship is over. And I hope that British Libel law will change as a result. It must now move into the 21st Century and reflect new technology. After all, there is now a new defence. Feel libelled? You can defend your case just as much as the other guy online. Except of course if you are dumb enough not to register @carterruck, for instance.
Today’s UK Parliamentary questions over #trafigura gag order [YouTube] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_J4ypytxaE
Guardian, Trafigura gag attempt unites house in protest:
Labour MP Paul Farrelly told the speaker, John Bercow, attempts by lawyers Carter-Ruck to gag the media could be a “potential contempt of parliament”.
The Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris said there was a need to “control the habit of law firms” of obtaining secrecy injunctions, and his colleague David Heath told the Commons a “fundamental principle” was being threatened: that MPs should be able to speak freely and have their words reported freely.
On the Conservative side, David Davies criticised the rising use of “super-injunctions”, in which the fact of the injunction is itself kept secret. He said courts should not be allowed to grant injunctions forbidding the reporting of parliament.
CharonQC, Lawcast 155: The Guardian Gag affair with Carl Gardner.
Catherine Mayer for Time: Twitter Triumphant: Attempts to Gag Newspaper Are Thwarted By Tweets:
Twitterers across the world colored their avatars green to show support for the protestors who took to Iran’s streets after the country’s disputed elections earlier this year. Users of the micro-blogging site might now consider overlaying their avatars with a film of sludge brown as a mark of their spontaneous, collective action to help undermine an attempt by the international oil traders Trafigura to gag a British newspaper reporting on a toxic dumping case.
Daily Mail, Law firm’s ‘Kafkaesque’ bid to block reporting of Parliamentary question is defeated – makes no mention of either Trafigura or Twitter!
Professional journal The Chemical Engineer has also been served with an injunction by Carter-Ruck for Trafigura.
Channel Four News report, Parliamentary question ban lifted.
Jon Snow talked to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and asked him what had happened after the publication of this morning’s paper.
He told Channel 4 News: “The blogosphere went berserk about a story that we published on our front page this morning, in which we said we can’t report a story for reasons we can’t tell you.
“After which there was about 16 hours of mayhem out there in the Twitter-sphere; and about an hour before we were due in court we received a letter from the lawyers saying ‘we give in’.
“What has changed was that for the past six weeks we have been faced with an injunction – a so-called super injunction – which not only meant not only could we not tell anyone we had been injuncted, but that we could not mention the company involved either – I think this is a very dangerous phase in English law.”
Tweet from @friendsofdarwin No mention of #trafigura or #carterruck on BBC 10 o’clock News. 5 minutes about racehorse’s retirement. #bbcfail
Gillian Shaw on canada.com, Twitter backs Guardian newspaper in fight for free speech: A win for all:
Today marked a watershed moment in which social media stepped in to quash an attempt to gag a newspaper.
Guardian, How super-injunctions are used to gag investigative reporting:
Libel lawyers Carter-Ruck and Schillings have proved adept at persuading judges that injunctions should now be granted on privacy grounds. Some tabloid newspapers are being served with “a handful” of such orders each week, according to media lawyers. The Guardian has been served with at least 12 notices of injunctions that could not be reported so far this year, compared with six in the whole of 2006 and five the year before.
The motivation is straightforward, according to Mark Stephens, a partner at law firm Finer Stephens Innocent. “As the libel and privacy capital of the world, people are coming here [to London] to bully the media and NGOs into not reporting on their nefarious activities,” he said.
Financial Times, Web’s effect on media law put to test:
Media lawyers, however, focused on the fact that the rulings of UK courts were not enforceable in the US.
Many of the servers hosting websites such as Facebook and Twitter are based in the US, meaning information cannot be suppressed.
Keith Ashby, head of litigation at Sheridans, said: “The difficulty is that injunctions cannot readily be obtained in the English courts against overseas internet service providers which would prevent them making the information available.”
Mr Ashby added: “If people get a whiff that publication of information has been injuncted in the print media, they are getting more canny about how to find the information on the internet.”
Michael Smyth, head of public policy at Clifford Chance, said: “We should not be surprised that the law finds it difficult to keep pace with technological advance and it is no answer in an era when judges are required to act proportionately to make a blanket order directed at the whole world.
“It is common practice for an injunction obtained against one newspaper to be copied to the whole of Fleet Street so that the market is aware of its terms and also bound by it. That’s the easy bit. What, however, of electronic publishers offshore about whom one knows next to nothing?” he added.
Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent agreed: “The issue with Twitter and SMS [text messaging] is that injunctions are not enforceable as you can’t stop people talking and in any case the servers which host these websites are in the US and outside the jurisdiction of the English courts.”
He pointed out that the order covering The Guardian was enforceable in England and Wales only, meaning that the Scottish and Irish media could report the parliamentary question.
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Can we twitter our way out of the recession?
A few days ago, through reasons I can’t face going through yet again I found myself marooned in the small village of Thanet, which, apparently, is somewhere near Reading. Upon finding out that the next train I could get was about an hour later I posted a comment on the twitter site that simply put – ‘Stuck in Thanet for an hour, is there anything good to see?’. Within minutes I had 4 messages with suggestions. This got me thinking…
In the last year Twitter has expanded by 1,840%, Facebook now has 300 million active users which, if it were a country would make it the fourth largest country in the world. With alarming regularity we seem to be deluged with a new social media site claiming to be the ‘next big thing.’ 69% of the entire UK population is now online. Businesses seem to be slowly cottoning onto the possibilites of using this for their own advantage, check out Ford for really interesting usage of social media to change the perceptions of their company. Even Gordon Brown has now got a Twitter, and who can forget his first appearance on YouTube?
Despite all these facts social media is still viewed in certain circles with slight suspicion, and I think this has meant that we have missed a trick in kick starting the economy.
If we look at Britain as a company it is obvious that something somewhere recently has gone horribly wrong. In a business prospective if this was happening it would trigger a full internal review – checking that all parts of the company are paying their way, are as productive as possible, accountable for their role, and if not making the necessary changes. As the world is getting smaller, with better transport, bigger supermarkets and the internet, the sense of community and belonging has slowly evaporated from small communities. But there is no reason not to use the internet to combat this.
In times of hardship people always bemoan the downfall of the ‘high street’. People start looking inwardly, trying to balance the financial need of shopping as cheaply as possible with the responsibility of helping the smaller businesses maintain their income. The smaller businesses struggle with maintaining footfall, keeping people in the town center rather than out of town shopping centres through one way or another.
The idea of using social media to get out of the recession is as simple as it is effective. Every town employes a marketing and communications specialist. This person is employed by the town for the town and as such has no political affiliations. The role of the position is to market the town to the inhabitants, and also the people from outside the town. They use email, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and any other means possible to brand their area and make it as attractive as possible. They organise events during the year in the town centre and market it appropriately. They liase with local businesses and leisure industries in a bid to try to drive tourism to the town and use these to kick start the economy in the towns again, all the time putting it in the faces of the local community.
This, done well, could have far reaching implications. Giving people a reason to to head into the town centres, to take more pride in the area they live in and to spend that little bit more money than they were expecting to would kick start the economy in the town, larger events would give locals a reason to bring friends and family from outside the area into their part of the world. It would also establish a sense of community, something that has long been lamented as lost in certain circles. If the smaller elements of the economy start to work again the cogs of the big wheels will slowly grind into action once more.
What do you think? Obviously there are a few issues in this idea, but as always I’m interested to know what you may think! Leave a comment and hopefully we’ll be able to throw the ideas round to something a bit more well rounded. In the meantime I’m off to try to become king of Facebook.
