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.

Comments

Simon Singh

[Bifurcati]

Now if Simon Singh could just win his case, then maybe the world will move one step closer to free and open speech. Security through obscurity never helped anyone in any context (*), and the more knowledge one has the better decisions one can make.

(*) Counterexamples welcome...

Re:Simon Singh

[EasyTarget]

Here's a counterexample.. two in fact.

20 years ago my motobike was not stolen, even after the thieves had laboriously sliced a chain and wired the ignition. Why? Because the engine would cut out within 10 seconds of starting, eventually they gave up and left. The engine cutting out was down to a obscure little security system I designed, built and fitted myself, killed the ignition for 2 seconds out of every 10 unless a magnet was held in the correct place as the ignition was turned on. The thieves probably never even suspected it was deliberate, they probably thought the bike was a lemon.. which is arguably true ;-)

My server, which has no open public SSH port.. Unless you know exactly where to look and when.

Both of these work because they are genuinely obscure single implementations. In order to break them the attacker would need to know that it exists, and then spend time analysing the unit to break it. Even if they know there is a hidden layer of defence, is the payout (a crummy motorcycle, control of my printer and access to my photos and porn collection) worth their time to break it?

The sort of Security through Obscurity you describe fails because it is identically implemented in millions of devices, ie. It is not really Obscure, it's just a secret. And if you break it in one place you break it in all places. The payout for finding and breaking it is much, much, greater.

Re:Simon Singh

[arethuza]

Stop being sensible about this kind of thing, it upsets a lot of the "Security Experts" out there.

Re:Stephen Fry

[dword]

Agreed. Please let me rephrase: twitting and blogging are work-arounds, because the problem is still there. It wasn't fixed by the lawyers dropping the gag request; it will only be fixed as soon as the judge admits that the judgement was a mistake and explains why it was a mistake.

Re:Stephen Fry

[Shrike82]

The only difference between Britain and the rest of the Western World is that our government just suck at hiding their Orwellian monitoring of the general population. You think other governments aren't monitoring, spying and tracking their own citizens? They've just learned from our mistakes about how to keep it quiet...

Worrying precedent

[abigsmurf]

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.

Re:Worrying precedent

[Hozza]

This case is (fortunately) nothing like the examples you give.

This was about a question in Parliament. i.e. Statements publicly made, by public representatives in a place where freedom of speech is protected to the highest extent in the UK. The statements were available to anyone who looked at the records.

The idiot lawyers then tried to prevent a newspaper from reprinting those statements, bringing into doubt the entire system of freedom of speech and press in the UK. (note to non-UK readers, there is no UK constitution to protect free speech).

The bloggers (and more importantly, pretty much every other part of the UK media) were entirely right to repeatedly report on the gross misuse of UK libel law.

Re:Stephen Fry

[polar red]

You think other governments and corporations aren't monitoring, spying and tracking all citizens/serfs/customers?

there, fixed that for ya.

Restore? You can't restore what was never there

[evilandi]

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.

Re:Restore? You can't restore what was never there

[yoshi_mon]

We English and Welshmen value correctness above freedom.

Who's correctness? Who's values? Therein lies the rub.

A system that is fully open always will have issues with 'wrong' theories. But it protects the good ones too. I honestly feel what your saying and good peer review is key. But your idea that openness is a bad thing is flawed.

Re:Restore? You can't restore what was never there

[ZorbaTHut]

The problem with "freedom of correctness" is how many so-called "correct" things later turn out to be incredible lies. Correctness requires someone who can objectively judge whether something is correct, and pretty much the entire history of the world is a repeated, blatant demonstration that nobody really knows what is objectively "correct" or not until - at best - a few decades down the road.

Re:Stephen Fry

[x2A]

That didn't look like his point to me at all...

"My guess is that you're not the guy who offers solutions"

*coughs* projecting!!!!!!

Re:Stephen Fry

[commodore64_love]

>>>Spoken like a true 13 year old.

Spoken like a man who never paid attention in history class. The UK wouldn't have the freedoms it enjoys today, if it wasn't for the bloodshed of the 1600s which eventually led to the Bill of Rights. And of course there are other examples - Eastern Europe is now free thanks to uprisings. France executed its monarch to form the first french republic. Rome overthrew the ancient tyrannical kings and founded the "res publica" circa 500 B.C. adopting the slogan SPQR - "The Senate and the People of Rome"

History shows that freedom is not given. It is taken by force and power restored where it belongs (with the people).

If a judge TRIES to take-away your right of free speech, his verdict has no meaning, and can be ignored. He has overstepped his authority because no one take away your rights. So I say - ignore the verdict and publish your story. If the judge continues down this path and still tries to take-away your inalienable right to use your own mouth to speak, then he needs to be imepached. And if he refuses to step down, then the People need to exercise their just authority, and remove him by force, and replace him with a new judge that understand he is a *servant* of the People, not a master. "From time to time the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural fertilizer." - Thomas Jefferson.