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

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.

One down, an unknown number to go.

[netpixie]

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)

Massive headline FAIL

[petes_PoV]

Twitter had nothing to do with this. Yes there was a lot of inconsequential twittering about this, but the reason the injunction was lifted was that reputable newspapers outside the UK were carrying the story. Since they were immune from the injunction - and their content was available in Britain, the injunction became pointless and (just like with the Spycatcher book, which was banned in Britain, but freely available in other english-speaking countries, or terrorist plots which were censored in the UK but freely reported by the NYT) were not serving the purpose of stopping british peopole from finding out the truth.

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.

Full Report

[ThoughtMonster]

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

Britain - Libel capital of the work.

[GammaStream]

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.

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:Stephen Fry

[Anonymous Coward]

The UK is actually starting to resemble late-communist Central Europe. You can have all the freedom you want, if you make sure you're surrounded with people who don't care about the rules. And most people are starting to not care.

I moved from Hungary, never the most oppressive state in the Eastern Bloc, to the UK in 1998. I don't have words for how delusional your suggestion is. 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.