Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Max Mosley—Written evidence
3. Issues relating to the enforcement of anonymity injunctions and superinjunctions,
including the internet, cross-border jurisdiction within the United
Kingdom, parliamentary privilege and the rule of law.
a. How can privacy injunctions be enforced in this age of ‘new media’? Is it practical and/or
desirable to prosecute ‘tweeters’ or bloggers?
Anyone who deliberately breaches a court order should be penalised. The only problem
would be with anonymity injunctions where the print media have been informed but (for
obvious reasons) not potential bloggers and tweeters. However provided the bloggers were
not themselves anonymous, an alert solicitor could quickly shut down any leak. What is
needed is a law requiring tweeters, bloggers etc to be identifiable analogous to Section 143
of PPERA which requires an imprint on election material identifying those responsible for
the material.
If so, for what kind of behaviour and how many people – where should or could those lines
be drawn?
Publication in breach of a court order by anyone should be the line. After all, that is the
current law. The law has to apply to everyone. In practice, without publication in the
national press, the problem becomes much smaller. Recent major breaches were principally
due to the misuse of Parliamentary Privilege.
b. Is it possible, practical and/or desirable for print media to be restrained by the law when
other forms of ‘new media’ will cover material subject to an injunction anyway? Does the
status quo of seeking to restrict press intrusion into individual’s private lives whilst the ‘new
media’ users remain unchallenged represent a good compromise?
Publication in print media, particularly the national press, is much more serious than most
on-line publication. But it is wrong to leave new media users unchallenged. They too should
be subject to the law. Eventually there are bound to be international conventions but even
today there is much that can and should be done to enforce the law in the new media both
nationally and internationally.
c. Is enough being done to tackle ‘jigsaw’ identification by the press and ‘new media’ users?
For example see Mr Justice King’s provisional view in NEJ v. Wood [2011] EWHC 1972
(QB) at [20] that information published in the Daily Mail breached the order of Mr Justice
Blake, and the consideration by Mr Justice Tugendhat in TSE and ELP v. News Group
Newspapers [2011] EWHC 1308 (QB) at [33]-[34] as to whether details about TSE
published by The Sun breached the order of Mrs Justice Sharp.
This is a matter for the courts but they should be given additional powers if current means
to prevent jigsaw identification are insufficient.
d. Are there any concerns regarding enforcement of privacy injunctions across jurisdictional
borders within the UK? If so, how should those concerns be dealt with?
Within the UK, any such concerns can be dealt with by an Act of Parliament.
e. Parliamentary Privilege
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