Slashdot Mirror
In the UK, a Few Tweets Restore Freedom of Speech
Several readers wrote to us about the situation in the UK that saw the Guardian newspaper forbidden by a judge from reporting a question in UK parliament. The press's freedom to do so has been fought for since at least 1688 and fully acknowledged since the 19th century. At issue was a matter of public record — but the country's libel laws meant that the newspaper could not inform the public of what parliament was up to. The question concerned the oil trading company Trafigura, the toxic waste scandal they are involved in, and their generous use of libel lawyers to silence those who would report on the whole thing. After tweeters and bloggers shouted about Trafigura all over the Internet, the company's lawyers agreed to drop the gag request.
I loved Stephen Fry's quote on this
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
(*) Counterexamples welcome...
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
It's great when this happens to a big business... But what about when it happens to individuals and victims?
To use an example. Imagine a celebrity's 13 year old daughter gets raped and there's a court order banning the publication of any information that can identify her. Will she have to deal with so many blogs reporting on it that the court order becomes pointless? Will she then have to live with horrific details of her attack being public knowledge?
With the Rihanna leaked pictures showing the results of her attack, it's become pretty clear to me that a good portion of the blogging community are devoid of tact and decency. It's only a matter of time before something of the nature of what I described happening.
According to the last issue of Private Eye there are quite a few of these super-injunctions currently being enforced (i.e. injunctions that not only stop you from saying something, but stop you from telling anyone that you've been injuncted).
I'd like a few more of them to be twittered, at least so we know that something's being hidden, even if we don't know what it is.
(and I know injuncted isn't the right word, but I don't know what is)
British libel laws are a travesty. To the point where half a dozen US states, including California, have had to pass laws preventing UK libel judgements from inhibiting free speech. There is even a case at present where a Ukranian website is defending statements it made in Ukranian regarding a Ukranian company, but in a British court - as the penalties handed down in British courts are so heavy, and litigation costs so high, that it's financial ruin for a defendant to attempt to defend themselves, even if they are successful.
So much for free speech in Britain.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The full report is also up on wikileaks, along with some background info.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Minton_report:_Trafigura_Toxic_dumping_along_the_Ivory_Coast_broke_EU_regulations%2C_14_Sep_2006
Great! Another victory for democracy, I mean twitter (is there really any difference these days?) Twitter users must be feeling especially proud today to be a part of something really special. I mean, how often do you get to say you're a user on a system of millions, and someone else uses that system to accomplish something? It's like back a few months ago, when twitter helped to overthrow the Iranian government. They were powerless to resist the constant flow of encouragement and support - at one point, a prominent blogger changed his web page to green in support of the protesters, an event widely cited as the tipping point in the revolution. Even now, revolutionary courts are handing down death sentences to the enemies of the people.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Hopefully this will motivate the courts and Parliament to do something about the problem of people coming to our country and using our courts to solve their petty grievances due to our ridiculous libel laws. The wikipedia article on libel tourism is particularly good in this regard. A lawyer on Newsnight (available on iplayer) last night listed the example of a Ukrainian business man who was suing a Ukrainian website for libel in the British courts under the justification that there happened to be some people in the UK who can read Ukrainian. This sort of stuff has simply got to stop. To help, sign the petition on the the no.10 website and the website 38 degrees is also running a campaign.
I should also mention that this question was raised in parliament to link the Minton report to Trafigura. The Minton report is still the subject of an injunction and it's contents can not be mentioned at this moment by the UK press but can be found on wikileaks.
Much as this is a victory for free speech, and another silly law rendered utterly unenforceable.
The court injunction seems to be the result of a hurried meeting between Trafigura and their legal aids in which their options, and the consequences thereof, were not really considered; in particular that stories of businesses involved in toxic waste dumping do not acquire nearly as much interest as stories of Great Britain descending into Orwellian dystopia. (Indeed, I don't recall seeing the story on slashdot about BAE Systems and bribery - a similar, if less environmentally criminal story)
Had they not pressed for the gag. the BBC (where I read the news, and looked up what was said becoming mildly disappointed it was not of something more substantial) would be limited to a headline on the front page of their website along the lines of "Guardian readers offended by yet another corrupt company"
He/she needs to be introduced to the 1689 Bill Of Rights and it's provision for the free reporting of Parliament. I've looked around, but no one appears to be mentioning the judge by name.
Paul Leader
Twitter nothing. This morning they were threatened with being held in contempt of Parliament. That's when it dropped.
Cheers,
Ian
UK Citizens have protection under the European Convention on Human Rights, which was to some extent enshrined directly into UK law with the Human Rights Act. This offers freedom of expression as Article 10, but this does allow the state to restrict speech "for the protection of the reputation or rights of others".
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
> Security through obscurity is nearly universally useful (provided you don't mind the obscurity). It's not something to entirely rely on, no, but it's difficult to argue that it doesn't help.
It's difficult? No, it's not difficult to argue that it doesn't help!
That's not how "security through obscurity" works, for starters, and the security community has a long history of both seeing the screwups caused by obscurity (and the improvements that came once people started accepting openness). A layer of obscurity over a secure system can seem good, but is unnecessary (because you have a secure system already). What actually happens is that it layers over a very insecure system. This is why security through obscurity is bad. That said, please note that security schemes often designate "secrets" (e.g. passwords) that must remain as such. This doesn't qualify as "obscurity" for the purpose of what people are against when they say that "security through obscurity" is bad.
There's a saying in security that anyone can design a "secure" system that they themselves cannot find a way to break. The problem is that other people can usually break it. This is where the obscurity comes in: it prevents people from seeing very obvious flaws. You fell into a similar trap when you said it's "difficult to argue" that the obscurity doesn't help. I had no trouble arguing against it.
They don't hold contests to decide the government encryption standards for no reason, you know. The hold them because if they only let government spooks look at their schemes, they would've missed lots of subtle flaws.
The truly most appalling silence in the media is about Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz (now deceased) and his libel tourism to prevent any comment, anywhere in the world, about funding of terrorism that may have passed through charities (Muwafaq, or Blessed Relief, Foundation) controlled by him.
This extended to the pulping of "Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It" by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld as a result of a libel case brought in Britain for a book published by a US citizen in the US.
The Slashdot headline "restore" is wrong. England and Wales have never had freedom of speech. It cannot be "restored", it was never there.
We English and Welshmen value correctness above freedom. Now I'll readily admit that sometimes - often, perhaps - megacorporates and in particular the law firm Carter Fuck try to abuse the system so that they also prevent inconvenient truths from slipping out.
But would I want to live in a country where people can spread lies about each other with no legal redress? No. The problems with freedom of speech go way beyond shouting "Fire!" in a crowded cinema. England and Wales have always regarded responsibilities above freedoms; in this case, the responsibility to get the facts right.
The US gets many things right, and a few things wrong. The USA's bonkers bible-belt religious fundamentalism, for instance, would never be tolerated in England and Wales, as most of it is demonstrably factually incorrect. England and Wales would never suffer from a Kansas-style education system which promoted creationism over science. So, whilst I respect your country's achievements, please don't try to sell me "freedom of speech" as a cure-all. It's no more a cure-all than the snake oil which I understand your forefathers were so keen on selling in the days of your Wild West.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
This multinational Swiss-based company I never heard about, Trafigura, was involved with the dumping of toxic waste in Ivory Coast because they contracted some guy there with no hazardous waste disposal expertise to do the job, sickening thousands of people and killing some as well, and then tried to stop publication of a question posed in the House of Commons about the matter, and tried to stop discussion of the fact that legal threats had been used to stop that publication? Finally, the Dutch press officer of Trafigura is accused of trying to alter the wikipedia article on the 2006 Ivory Coast dumping event in 2007.
Just how many layers of evil and failure can they manage to cram into one event?
This is a story about the law as it applies in England and Wales. Scotland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotland (that famous non-sovereign state -slashdot anon) has an entirely separate and distinctly different, Roman based system of law and no real equivalent of the infamous Carter Ruck (billed as a "British Law Firm" whatever that is) and subsequently no really litigious use of libel laws on the magnitude of those in England.
Scottish Judges are renowned for making anyone guilty of contempt spend at least one night in the cells - famous editors and briefs included. Much to the amusement to the mainly retired and unemployed audience in the public gallery.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
I was wondering the same, I saw Private Eye itself use 'injuncted', but I think this is another of those slightly fishy past-participle formations, like 'to gift' which some people use instead of 'to give'. I believe the right verb is 'to enjoin', and so 'enjoined'. An act of joining things is a junction, and so an act of enjoining is an injunction (so the first letter changes, but apart from that it follows the rule). Merriam-Webster also supports this.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
"Lose" is a verb, your use of "loose" is an adjective. "Loose" can also be a verb. "If you loose your dog you may lose him." I had a sig a while back that read "If you loose your money you are unwise. If you lose your money you are unlucky."
Free Martian Whores!
> The threat of legal action does have a chilling effect on freedom of speech, but not quite the chilling effect of being beaten senseless or a bullet to the back of the head.
You're right. That's why the press across Europe is scared to death to criticize radical Islam.
...as long as it's below 140 characters.
Just make sure you don't write multiple "tweets" and end up above the 7 lines, or Cardinal Richelieu will come and hang you.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This seems to be a hard concept for some people, but here's an attempt to explain: because he thinks the situation in the UK is bad does not necessarily mean he thinks the situation in the US is wonderful. In other words, they're both bad.
Are you seriously suggesting that I ought to be held at legal risk anytime I say anything that's not 1) provable by scientific experiment or 2) provable beyond doubt in court? If that was the case, I wouldn't be saying much at all, ever. An example: if I offered the opinion that say, there was no point in going to the US v. Honduras world cup match, as the US was going to wipe the field with them, I could get hauled into court by the Honduran team? After all, that statement is unprovable in any way (at least, before the match) and could harm the Honduran team by causing their revenue to drop. In fact, huge swaths of topics would be too risky to discuss at all: religion, politics, entertainment, anyone's love life - because most of what there is to say is unprovable, and when there's money involved, it's easy to find a way in which someone was at least potentially harmed.
Your policy sounds like a great recipe for no one to be able to communicate at all.
Just to make matters worse, the toxin in question was hydrogen sulphide, a well understood toxin whose presence is obvious by the rotten egg smell and easily destroyed. The whole problem can be traced down to placing practically no value on human life. Honestly they should be up on murder charges rather than just arguing about if they do or do not have a civil liability.