Twitter sued for ‘breaking’ UK super injunction. Oh yes. | Hacker News Reader

Twitter sued for ‘breaking’ UK super injunction. Oh yes.

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78 pointsankimal65 comments

I find it bizarre that the entire UK press can be censored from reporting on something as mundane as a footballer having an affair.

Does freedom of the press carry so little weight in the UK? Are you UK citizens not outraged by this?

In the UK it is deemed that people have a right to privacy. This is overturned when it is deemed that information is "in the public interest," but knowing the sordid details of some "celebrity's" affairs is not necessarily deemed important enough. there is a balance to be had between an individual's privacy, and the right to public knowledge.

In Europe in general, and in the UK in particular, some reporting in the US is regarded with distaste, encroaching as it does on what the British regard as privacy, all in the name of "freedom of speech." The converse is also true, with USAians being horrified that anyone should claim a right to any kind of privacy once the press decide they are interested in them.

I never want to be famous.

And FWIW - I'm neither European, nor USAian.

Super-injunctions are granted on a case-by-case basis, and I believe British privacy law is pretty weak compared to some other EU states', such as France's.

UK papers certainly seem to get away with printing a lot of prurient irrelevancies that have no genuine public interest but are obviously damaging to the families of those reported on.

"In Europe in general, and in the UK in particular, some reporting in the US is regarded with distaste, encroaching as it does on what the British regard as privacy, all in the name of "freedom of speech." "

Not true in my experience. The brits take second to nobody when it comes to prying into the lives of celebrities. Consider the british tabloid press, whose readers could care less about privacy as a principle. The british red-tops (and nattier dailies as well) enjoy tremendous readership, even though few brits profess to actually trust the journalists.

I have heard brits express puzzlement over why we care so much about the personal lives of politicians, which is strikingly ironic, given that the politicians are the ones with the ability to screw us.

There's certainly a market for the juicy details of celebrity life, but this is what makes a strong right to privacy more important.

"In the UK it is deemed that people have a right to privacy."

I believe the public outcry is more around the fact that this is only available to corporations and the rich as these super-injunctions run over £100k[1] to obtain.

[1] This number has been bandied about in many of the articles, but I haven't seen an "authoritative" source on it.

Indeed, I have looked myself for a costing.

I guess that any disclosure of costs by the court would also disclose who paid said costs, and therefore... Ah, what a calamity.

It's interesting that due to pressure some of the CCTV in the UK is now starting to be removed, but if they remove half of it we'll still be the world leaders of it I suspect.

As an aside, using "USAians" in your writing is probably not what you want here. Intentionally mangling the name of a group/nationality because you don't like the standard naming convention or because you want to get a little jab in to show your distaste for the group just undermines your credibility.

If I were to write a valid political commentary but use "Dumbocrats" for Democrats or "Republitards" for Republicans it would be hard to take me seriously, right? When someone online writes "USAians" it's very difficult to regard the rest of their writing as legitimate and not trolling or intentionally smug/antagonistic.

I'm just guessing, but if he's from Canada he could be described as (North) American and perhaps he wanted to make that distinction. USAian is hardly a slur, it's entirely different from your Dumbocrats/Republitards example.

I'll reply here though it's more of a general response to all the people who replied. First, I'm not sure why I got so many downvotes, I believe my response was quite civil and appropriate, my intention was to be helpful.

Clearly many people here do not view "USAian" as an offensive or derogatory term. I'll try to explain why I believe it to be inappropriate and hope I can do so in a polite and effective enough manner to avoid more downvotes.

"USAian" reads to me as someone who, under the guise of disambiguation, is intentionally being diminutive. Very rarely does a situation occur in which "American" as a term for the people from the US actually result in confusion versus the entire continent. It seems most likely that the speaker is using it to intentionally point out the unimportance of the USA to counter an implied American self-importance.

You're using a term for a group of people that they would never use for themselves, which is a strong indicator it may not be a desirable label. Further, given common themes in current global culture, it is very easy for the term to be taken as an intentional insult, as if the speaker is "putting them in their place".

Whenever I see something like "USAian" I assume the speaker views Americans as self-centered, imperialistic, unworldly or similar and is using the term to intentionally remind the reader of the significance of the rest of the Americas, with the implication they need this reminding.

But, based on the responses, maybe I'm an outlier. Hopefully the above clarified my original response.

What exactly is the term that this group of people would use for themselves, in a context where they want to be clear that they are referring to nationals of the USA specifically?

(On reflection, how does "US American" strike you? This seems analagous to "South Korean" or "Mainland Chinese")

There is no ambiguity in 'American'. At best, there exists among some people the belief that there should be ambiguity where none exists.

Go strike up a conversation with anyone in the world and refer the people from the New World as 'Americans'. That person will assume you are referring to US citizens. Now, should the issue be forced somehow you will have to explain that, in fact, you were referring to folks from the New World all along, not so-called US Americans specifically. That person will then probably roll their eyes a bit.

So it's a moot point. You're trying to resolve a confusing situation that has virtually no chance of ever actually occurring, where in fact your solution would actually introduce confusion.

But, there is arguably no more commonality between the people of Norway, Portugal and Bulgaria than between Canadians, Mexicans and Chileans, so why can we call the first group collectively European but not the second collectively American?

The standard English nomenclature for residents of the USA (which I belive isn't so much of an issue in other languages) is confusing.

I'm not making any claim that it's logical or follows a pattern. Are you sure you really mean "confusing" though? As in, ambiguous? Because it really isn't for most people, even those that don't speak English very well.

No self-respecting Canadian would refer to himself as an American, for obvious reasons.

It's not a slur, but neither is it a term in actual use. It's designed to draw attention to the fact that the author thinks the actual term ("american") is wrong, somehow.

But of course language is never wrong, it's just what people speak.

Americans have always called themselves americans: before there was a USA these were the american colonies. If you wanted to distinguish yourself from the continental subjects you called yourself an "american".

It's only in the last half century of hegemony that people started freaking out and thinking that somehow the term was an attempt to usurp ownership of the continent or whatever.

I read his post, and the use of USAian didn't bother me. It is not offensive, unlike the examples you gave.

What are you talking about?

"USAian" is an abbreviation of "United States of American", use by folks who believe that "American" refers to the entire pair of continents.

I'm also a US-native, and didn't take it as an attempt to offend. I used to live in South America, where people tend to get a little prickly about the US having laid claim to the term "American." They always call people from the US "Estadounidense," literally, UnitedStatsian.

It's really our own fault: we have a country that has an extremely awkward name. We're the United States of America, so "America" is, grammatically speaking, the name of our country, but we're also part of a set of continents that's also called "America." We could actually use a better term like Unitedstatsians or USAians.

I find that calling Americans "Unitedstatesians" is like calling the French "Republicans".

I've heard about that about people from South America before, but it doesn't make much sense to me - the USA is the only country with "America" in its name. Every other use is for the names of continents, which have no actual political meaning (except maybe the EU, but not even all of Europe belongs to the EU, and how many Europeans refer to themselves as that before referring to themselves as a member of their country?)

well at least we're claiming to be the "united states of" america. those damned australians aren't even trying to be polite about it, claiming the entire continent themselves. those poor new zealanders can't even use the name of their continent to describe where they're from for fear people thinking they're from the country australia. instead they have to resort to being called the sheep fuckers of australia because that sounds better than being australian.

I had never considered upon which continent New Zealand is considered to reside before reading your comment. After consulting Wikipedia, I've discovered that the answer is a lot less straight-forward than I had originally thought.

Before doing my (minimal) research, I would have assumed they were part of Asia, if for no other reason than that I considered Australia the continent and Australia the country to be essentially one and the same (i.e. a continent consisting of just one country), but that doesn't seem to be the case.

According to Wikipedia's article on the continent of Australia [1], "New Zealand is not on the same continental shelf and so is not part of the continent of Australia but is part of the submerged continent Zealandia. Zealandia and Australia together are part of the wider region known as Oceania or Australasia."

Similarly, Wikipedia's "list of sovereign states and dependent territories by continent" page [2], does not use "Australia" as a continental group, and instead uses "Oceania" to encapsulate states in that region.

So I guess New Zealanders don't really have any right to complain about not being able to call themselves Australian, since they're not even technically part of the Australian continent. They could refer to themselves as Oceanians, Australasians, or even Polynesians [3], but not as Australians.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_%28continent%29

[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...

[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oceanias_Regions.png

Genuine question here. How is the right to privacy circumvented to allow for the CCTV cameras and other policies that seem, to me at least, to be a pretty clear invasion of privacy. Seems to me this policy is more about allowing aristocrats, celebrities and the wealthy to squash stories they don't want published about them.

I think the argument is that what you do in public places is public knowledge. If random people legally positioned can see you, then there is no assumption of privacy.

I speak from a position of no formal knowledge, merely having derived a working model that seems mostly to predict accurately various things. It's a working theory, not based on actual law. It's also probably got flaws, but I don't really care - I provide this working model merely as a starting point.

And regarding the rich being able to circumvent the law, it was ever thus. These days you need vast amounts of money to get into power, and once there, it's unlikely the laws will make life difficult for the rich and powerful.

CCTV cameras aren't as large a privacy breach as having something about you published in a paper, since on a CCTV the number of viewers is usually zero or one, and they usually have no interest in you beyond your presence at the location of the CCTV camera at a certain point in time. In fact, I suspect that CCTV footage of, say, someone entering an adult store would fall under the privacy law and would not be legally re-distributable beyond the owner of the store (this is pure speculation though, but it does at least provide an example of how the two apparently conflicting policies could be resolved).

They don't have a Bill of Rights that explicitly grants this "freedom" do they? Apparently they use this to define what they can and can't do as journalists: http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199556458/

On one hand, the European Convention on Human Rights protects the right to a private and family life, and on the other, you've got freedom of the press. These two acts obviously contradict each other, and so super injunctions exist to allow a judge to decide if the former has greater precedence than the latter.

UK citizen here.

Yeah, I'm pretty outraged by it. I mean, we don't have true freedom of expression/speech/reporting over here (hence super injunctions), but it's still crazy how various rich people - mainly overpaid footballers - are having affairs and then bullying their way through the courts to protect their 'privacy'/overexcited lebido..

Plus we've now got the ridiculous situation whereby the person who cheated (in this case, Ryan Giggs..) is protected, whilst the person they cheated with (in this case, Imogen Thomas) is seeing their name dragged through the dirt. It's bizzare to say the least.

Thankfully this hopefully won't be as much of an issue in the future however, since a report was released today (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13465286) and the general consensus is that injuctions have been awarded too often and in the future they shouldn't be used (as much) for these purposes.

Still, it's pretty annoying that rich adulterers are being legally protected..

  > , it's pretty annoying that rich adulterers
  > are being legally protected..

They have the best laws that money can buy...

If you want to be pragmatic about it, the targets of such celebrity gossip are generally rich. The only people this excludes are the 'human interest' types - perpetrators and victims of some crime or tragedy - and the stories tabloids like to run on those people are better served by libel laws anyway. So really this isn't a big deal.

How do you then evaluate that (at least in this case), the celebrity that cheated is protected, but the person that that celebrity cheated with is not protected? That doesn't make sense. Due the to high profile of the rich celebrity, the other person's name will also be dragged through the papers (especially if they have been banned from mentioning the celebrity in question). What about that person's 'right to privacy?'

I share your outrage at the super injunctions and I don't believe they are the best way to handle the rampant gutter press. However - where do you get your facts from that he cheated on his wife? Supposition and rumour I suspect. If you read the court documents - http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2011/1232.html - he definitely appears guilty of being stupid, naive and manipulated by a money grabbing woman, with an over inflated sense of self worth and fake celebrity. I'm no fan of the super injunctions - I believe it would have all blown over very quickly had he not have gone to the courts. But you are stating categorically that he cheated on his wife and that she is the innocent party. Based on what evidence? If you think carefully this is exactly the type of behaviour that we should be trying to deal with, guesswork and gossip being reported as fact.

While I'm not particularly defending the situation that's arisen, what public good is served by knowing that a footballer had an affair?

Censoring that Trafigura were dumping toxic waste was, I agree, wrong. But revealing that two people are/were sleeping together is just salacious gossip; I can't see who it helps and it certainly doesn't help the families of the individuals concerned.

The problem is that to implement a policy that distinguishes between the two situations, you have to trust the government to distinguish between a Trafigura and an affair, and even harder to believe, to act appropriately in each situation. My school of thought is that you should trust entities without competition as little as possible.

Wow. Next up: suing the midwives who delivered the miners who dug out the coal that was burned to generate the electricity that powered the factory that manufactured the computer that was used to originate the offending tweet.

You know, I've been thinking about how great it would be to have a decentralized twitter/news system, but I wonder if that would actually make censorship like this easier because you could target users directly, which would be less absurd than targeting companies like Twitter.

Years ago Circle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(file_system)) had a distributed news system call gossip. It pretty much operated as a trust network. You'd pull down gossip from people you knew and republish it (if you chose) along with a trust metric.

These days I'd probably go for something RESTful in website form. The trick would be to clearly define the various roles and make it easy for people to slot in and build compatible parts of the network. Then pump in the hype.

Someone commented on that TC.eu article the names involved, maybe TechCrunch should be sued as well.

As a Brit I think I speak for quite a few of us when I say that these super injunctions are quite fun. If an affair like that was reported I probably wouldn't even read the shitty gossip columns that published it, certainly I wouldn't care if I did come across them. As soon as a super injunction comes into play it turns it into a guessing game at first, and a "who will get sued" game second. Much more enjoyable to follow.

http://www.heyryangiggs.com/ - I see the Streisand effect is in full force

Well that would explain what the fuss is about: if true, it's just tabloid celebrity nonsense. Not like, oh, the Trafigura superinjunction (where exposing the nasty little nest of maggots behind the story was clearly in the public interest):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/20/trafigura-anatom...

If you are in the UK, how do you know which people you aren't allowed to publish stories about? How do you know if a super injunction is in force? Are they published somewhere?

You don't. That's what makes this whole deal so annoying -- you can accidentally break the law and be liable for imprisonment (contempt of court) or horrendous damages without knowing why.

People above are mentioning how super injunctions violate an American's conception of the right to free speech, but I think this is the more troubling aspect: that it violates the journalist's right to due process. I'll grant that ignorance of the law isn't usually a good defense, but when the law (or in this case, court order) is kept secret, what other defense can you use?

It's definitely fulfilling someone's Kafka-esque fantasy.

I am pretty sure that the press are allowed to know about the injunctions, they're just not allowed to report on them.

What about the rest of us -- those of us who aren't newspaper journalists and on whom the injunctions are not served, but who may nevertheless be liable for contempt of court if we tweet or blog about something we read on, say, a foreign web site?

We don't know that republishing the information is in contempt of court, but ignorance of the law is not (and never has been) a defense -- at best it's merely a mitigating factor for the court to consider when handing down a sentence.

> We don't know that republishing the information is in contempt of court

It's clearly not, since republishing information (in this case, a statement from an MP using parliamentary privilege) is how we knew about Trafigura and other issues covered by a superinjunction.

I'm not sure why you are downvoted for that, that's exactly what happens; the press get contacted telling them who they can't talk about.

The general public isn't informed (that's the point of a superinjunction) but how would they know about this anyway if they didn't know the subjects personally? Presumably there is some protocol for people who may be aware of what's censored, but suggesting that people can "accidentally fall foul of the law" is as realistic as suggesting a room of 7 billion monkeys randomly hitting typewriter keys will come up with Shakespeare.

The brilliant thing about super/hyper injunctions is that you could be breaking them without even knowing it, because you have no idea that they existed. What a complete perversion of the justice system.

Could this be said Twitter account?

http://twitter.com/#!/InjunctionSuper

It could be, but according to some sources very familiar with superinjunctions (Private Eye) apparently they were all BS.

The news reported earlier that reports that Twitter is being sued are incorrect and that they are just having the user details requested from them.

Which will no doubt lead them to a Starbucks on the Old Kent Road, but you have to try!

Would you please post a link to that report.

The article linked to in this HN post is poorly sourced. I'm hoping to read a credible journalistic article on this subject.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13477811 It is about half way down that you get the clarification

More details here on legal aspects of the UK courts chasing a us company. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8526865...

Also http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2568192

Does Twitter have any obligations to UK law? Are they incorporated there somehow?

It looks like it http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/twitter-starts-hiring-sa...

But I wonder if they will start getting cold feet about having an office in London now.

A super-injunction isn't the same as a 'cover-up', it just puts a halt to the media circus. It doesn't provide secrecy, it just stops the tabloids scrambling for all the lurid details and publishing them to their giddy readership for weeks on end, probably ruining a few peoples lives in the process. Which is what usually happens in Britain. Wayne Rooney and John Terry, England's two most accomplished players, have both been the centre of a national debacle that lasted months, all in the last year.

This reminds me about the discussion Canada was having where it is illegal to announce election results until all polls are closed; people were questioning the right to tweet results before all polls were closed.

Twitter really changed the game for information distribution and I am surprised that we are now just talking about the ramifications. News entities, countries, people all need to understand the power of Twitter and find ways to fix the current system and not just sue where things are broken.

It's not Twitter, it's the internet in general, Twitter's just exacerbated the effect.

It will be interesting to see how useful this action is if the people tweeting about this aren't even UK citizens.

i'm obviously not a lawyer, so my understanding may be utterly wrong. The injunction is covering whole world, though the judge can enforce it only in UK. That seems that if you ever plan on visiting the UK during statute of limitation for injunction violation, you'd think twice before tweeting and most probably decide against it :).

Or more likely, decide against visiting the UK.

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