Twitter wreaks havoc with Britain’s ornate secrecy laws

National Post.com ^ | Wednesday June 1, 2011 | Araminta Wordsworth

[canuck_conservative]

.... No one — including the media — is supposed to note the injunctions exist. In one notorious case, Fred Goodwin, head of Royal Bank of Scotland, bailed out by taxpayers for billions of pounds, obtained an order preventing anyone from reporting he was philandering with a colleague while negotiations were going on. Even saying he was a banker was forbidden.

Now, the city of South Tyneside has used the law to pursue a blogger known as Mr. Monkey, who has allegedly levelled a stream of criticisms against councillors and council officers. On the weekend it persuaded San Francisco-based Twitter to hand over identifying information about the account. This has had the instant effect of producing more leaks, as Martin Evans reports for The Daily Telegraph .....

“As the row over super-injunctions descends into utter farce, the blinkered British judiciary is rapidly turning itself into an international laughing stock … Americans gaze in disbelief as British judges stifle free expression. This is because since 1791, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has insisted, in the simplest of words: ‘Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.’ More than two centuries on, it’s time for Britain to catch up.” ....

“Throughout the 2000s, London gained the nickname of a ‘Town called Sue’ in legal circles, after it became an extremely popular destination for libel tourism. The advent of Twitter, however, has twisted this upside down...... In any case, Twitter’s age of innocence is over. Anonymity is not guaranteed and users are not immune to libel, or impervious to injunctions. Unless you can afford a good lawyer and a few return trips to San Francisco, be wary. Mind your tweets.”.....

[canuck_conservative]

Full article at link, I only picked out the juicy parts as per excerpting rules.

Not just France, England too likes special rules for the rich & famous.

[yldstrk]

twitter and tweet

kooky

don’t get it

goofy

[mo]

You’d think they’d have a relatively acute memory of the French revolution...with its guillotine thingy....and they’d be more careful about such “special laws”...

[1010RD]

You cannot twitter anonymously? Do you have to give them your ‘real’ information?

[maica]

And I suppose the Brits were just as outraged by the Wikileaks of thousands of US Military documents!

[Jack Hydrazine]

It sounds like Mr. Monkey and other Brits need to have some one in America tweeting that kind of info.

[Eva]

You're going to love this one from the WSJ, We need a mechanism to coordinate the global communications industry, something like a 'media U.N.

Toward a New World Media Order

[MrEdd]

They climbed a mountain that was far too high
And when they found out they couln’t fly
It was too late

They’ve come undone