Is anonymous blogging under threat after Nightjack was identified?
Dear Nightjack,
Your quest to protect your identity is at an end, sadly. Despite your best efforts, Mr Justice Eady refused to protect your anonymity and you now have your name splashed across the papers this morning. Needless to say there is some concern about the implications of this case for other anonymous bloggers in the UK, but I’m not sure that they have anything to be worried about because I don’t think the judge made the right decision and I doubt that his logic would work on the rest of us in any case.
The back story is that you had sought an injunction to prevent yourself being named by a newspaper, arguing that it could put you at risk of disciplinary action for breaching regulations. Your blog ridiculed “a number of senior politicians” and advised “decent” members of the public under police investigation to “complain about every officer . . . show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it.” You are one of around a dozen police officers to run popular blog sites, along with scores of other public servants, which anonymously document their daily life. The judge ruled that you had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”. “It would seem to be quite legitimate for the public to be told who it was who was choosing to make, in some instances, quite serious criticisms of police activities and, if it be the case, that frequent infringements of police discipline regulations were taking place,” the judge added. The judge also said that even if you could have claimed a right to anonymity, he would have ruled against you on public interest grounds. The action arose after Patrick Foster, a Times journalist, identified you “by a process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information on the internet.” As a result of you being identified, your local police force has launched an investigation and issued you with a written warning. Your blog has also been removed. Some of your website’s entries had attracted nearly half a million readers a week including anecdotes about the cases on which he had worked.
The arguments for and against the disclosure of your identity presented a fascinating test case. Your QC Hugh Tomlinson argued that “thousands of regular bloggers . . . would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them”. Mr Tomlinson said that you wished to remain anonymous and had taken steps to preserve his anonymity. I’m sure some anonymous bloggers would indeed be worried about being unmasked, and my fierce support of everyone’s right to privacy means that 9 times out of 10 I think anonymity should be protected. Mr Justice Eady said that the mere fact that the blogger wanted to remain anonymous did not mean that he had a “reasonable expectation” of doing so, but I disagree with this. Even if a blogger’s identity is known, privacy laws should protect them. The judge also state that The Times was under no enforceable obligation to maintain your anonymity, which is undoubtedly true but that does make a mockery of their refusal to name their sources in every political story that we read about in the papers.
The most intruiging part of the case was delivered by Antony White, QC for The Times, who argued that there was a public interest in non-compliance by a police officer with his obligations under the statutory code governing police behaviour and also with general public law duty on police officers not to reveal information obtained in the course of a police investigation other than for performing his public duties. Personally, I have no sympathy with anyone who breaches their contract and gets caught. The laws banning the revealing of information about police investigations is in place for a bloody good reason and the fact that you were careless enough to discuss real cases in such detail that they could be identified from the information that you gave was reckless. Other blogs, particularly medical ones, run the same risk when discussing cases and if they get caught then I will have little sympathy with them too. Ultimately, it was your carelessness that led to your exposure. That said, I do not agree that there was a “public interest” in your non-compliance with the statutory code. I think you should have been disciplined, but not in the public eye. Your local force has every right to shut down your blog to prevent further exposure of police cases but there is still no justification for putting your name in the papers.
The privacy laws in the UK are an absolute disgrace and I have blogged about them many times before. According to the Press Complaints Commission, “Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications.” Unfortunately, if a case is declared to be ‘in the public interest’ as happened with you, this rule does not apply. ”The public interest includes, but is not confined to: detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety, protecting public health and safety and preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation. There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself. Whenever the public interest is invoked, the PCC will require editors to demonstrate fully how the public interest was served.” None of this applies to you and the Times editor did not demonstrate anything of the sort, hence my disgust at your treatment. Even though you have no right to have your identity protected purely on the basis that you might get into trouble if it was revealed, your identity should definitely have been protected by privacy laws.
Yours sincerely,
A.Tory
Witanagemot Blogs
I look forward to the MSM identifying everybody involved in the infamous “red rag” website that was the topic of so much comment a few months ago.
The outing of Nightjack is a shame, especially in the same week that Brown has told us that the Iraq inquiry will have to be in secret so that people can speak freely.
Ray, don’t hold your breath….
Patently, the lack of consistency is hilarious. The government affords themselves whatever secrecy they desire to prevent embarrassment, but British citizens are at the mercy of journalists.
One of the most ferociously defended journalistic principles is their right to protect anonymous sources. By outing NightJack the Times have only succeeded in removing any right they may have had for keeping their sources anonymous.
In my opinion, this is a spectacular own goal. The next time the Times posts an article citing “sources” or an “insider” we should demand that they reveal the name of their source – that is the standard they have chosen after all.
I was quite amazed that Sir David Eady QC of GOODSHILL FARMHOUSE CRANBROOK ROAD TENTERDEN KENT TN306UN, a man noted for his obsession with privacy, would do such a thing.
Judge Eady is certainly not on good form right now, after this judgement and his slapdown of Simon Singh in his libel case.
“Patently, the lack of consistency is hilarious. “
Or chilling…
I would like to know what “case details” are supposed to have been leaked by Night Jack. It seems to me that while he remained anonymous the things he mentioned can be seen to be “generalisations”. Only when his name and force are revealed can they be linked back to “real” cases. He did not mention any names, so how can anything he said compromise anything?
Without people like nightjack how will we,the public be able to hold government and the police to account.Yet more hidden mismanagment.
As for the judge,yet another reason for electing them.This man is happy to shield child molesters accomplices,yet exposing mismanagment in the police is worse in his book,the man disgusts me.
BE, from the Telegraph: “One described an inquiry into the rape of “Melissa”, a 14-year-old who was plied with alcohol and then raped in a hotel room. Mr Horton wrote that the offender had an Asian name, had hepatitis, and assaulted the girl at a seaside hotel, while filming it on his mobile phone. It is believed to relate to Ajmal Mohammad, who had received an indefinite sentence at Preston Crown Court for raping a drunken teenager in a Blackpool hotel room. The court heard that he was infected with Hepatitis C, and had filmed the attack on his phone. Mr Horton disclosed his suspicions that a key witness had misled police about her knowledge of the sex attack. In another post entitled “A Survival Guide For Decent Folk”, Mr Horton offered advice to people who found themselves the subject of a police investigation. His advice was to “complain about every officer… [and] show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it”.” I daresay that the journalist figured out who he was from posts such as this, although the papers weren’t quite clear on that this morning.
DMC, I agree that Justice Eady is not exactly inviting compliments at the moment.
This will be very easy to get around. Just get someone else to write the blog for you. Don’t live too close to them, make it someone you know and trust, who shares your convictions, but who is not a member of your profession.
When unmasked, the person who writes the blog, will be under no obligations to name their source, they are merely printing what others have reported to them in confidence.
Up yours Murdoch!
The answer to the question you pose is no, but if you want to remain annonymous I guess you have to work harder to cover your tracks.
Tony, your cunningness is appreciated.
Alastair, I think a lot of people will be following that advice.
Oops! There was me thinking that ‘Jack Night’ was his real name, and that you are indeed called ‘Letters From A Tory’.
[...] Letters from a Tory asks if anonymous blogging is under threat [...]
I used to read Nightjack and it is my recollection that any cases mentioned by him were suitably anonymised. It seemed to me he was using them as exemplars over a range of issues rather than reporting details of a particular crime.
The paradox is that it is The Times naming of Nightjack and, more importantly, revealing his force, which allows any identification of the cases to which he might have referred.
I agree with others above that Justice Eady’s judgement does nothing for us as a democracy. Unfortunately, some of the criticism of him is unfair. What he has done has not set a precedent in law as far as I can tell. He just used the law of ‘reasonable expectation’. NightJack had no reasonable expectation that he would be able to remain anonymous, either from his superiors or anyone else. He was entitled however, to make it as difficult as possible for his identity to be found out.
The law and our personal morality are not the same, and ‘hard cases make bad law’. This one case alone should not give a judge the right to set aside many years of legal precedent. If parliament want to change things, that is their right, not the right of Judges.
Save your ire for those who deserve it.
1) Parliament, because despite the recent trend of ‘judicial activism’, Parliament still creates the framework under which all law is based.
2) More importantly, the Times. They have shown an incredible amount of malice, and they have almost certainly connived with the Lancs Constabulary. Did anyone see the piece that was attributed to NightJack in the Times today? I can’t believe that it was not written under duress.
Readers of the MSM should never forget the incredible level of hypocracy in this from the Times. It has clearly sent a message out to the bloggers in ‘professions’: If you blog we’ll find you and expose you, but as a journolistic source you are safe. Come to us, feed us stories, or we’ll out you if you get too popular, or if our political masters desire it.
Mark, my parents are weird but not that weird.
Talwin, the paradox is unfortunate to say the least, but I was under the impression that the journalist used cases such as this to track Night Jack down…..
Tony, I’m really starting to get the feeling that The Times did this just to ‘put one over’ on the bloggers, seeing as their business is collapsing around them now that bloggers are breaking news faster than them.
NightJack had no reasonable expectation that he would be able to remain anonymous,
That was, indeed, the crux of the case. But it is purely the Judge’s opinion. I wonder how many Judges blog anonymously, and how many understand the context and expectations of bloggers?
This might be another “What is Gazza?” moment, albeit in a different context.
>The most intruiging part of the case was delivered by Antony White, QC for The Times, who argued that there was a public interest in non-compliance by a police officer with his obligations under the statutory code governing police behaviour and also with general public law duty on police officers not to reveal information obtained in the course of a police investigation other than for performing his public duties.
This is a difficult one.
Agreed, the Times have left themselves up sh*t creek and have then knocked a hole in their own boat next time they try to preserve anonymity.
I think there probably *is* a public interest in the identity policemen who don’t follow the “rules”. If it was a policeman who had, for example, abused their rights to detain or search people under terrorist laws, or had spuriously red-flagged someone on a database who was subsequently been detained using threat of force by armed officers, I would want to know. I’m not sure that I can draw a distinction between these cases and Nightjack revealing identities.
The Times have made it more difficult to operate in the grey areas, where a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach worked to general advantage. The most awkward one for the paper will be semi-official leaks or when they are tipped the wink in advance to attend a secret raid. Such a leak will also be in breach of the same rules.
I think NJ probably did deserve to be disciplined, as he skated the edge and went the wrong side of the line.
The one positive point is that the police have gone for “written warning” rather than “summary dismissal” as in the Christopher Glamorganshre case, which is probably more appropriate.
Big brother and it web of opinion bashing freedom of expression denial is wide and getting wider.
We should fear the outcome of this case.
David Icke and all, need to be informed that, alljoking aside, and funny pictures, that the ‘real’ illuminati, is actual the legal profession of the west, that’s the truth, go check it out.
[...] letter from a Tory is worth a read [...]
I believe it could be a way of MSM getting their own back on those pesky bloggers. How dare they take business away from the glorious good of MSM!
Because of the internet, I only buy a newspaper now to get Mrs Specialone her puzzles. I have read so much rubbish in newspapers, have been subject to scandalous lies by MSM in the past too.
I now prefer to get the ‘truth’ from serious bloggers. I actually know people who believe everything that BBC news says!
http://www.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=127470 Nightjack get your complaint in first
P Foster would have done well to read this when he was confronted at his door by the boys in blue
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1531307/Student-barred-over-sex-film.html Patrick Foster Peeping Tom
A very interesting state of affairs! the fact that “Your blog ridiculed “a number of senior politicians”” in our humble opinion is fine, People in the public eye should be aware of what they say and realise they are under scrutiny.
However, “and advised “decent” members of the public under police investigation to “complain about every officer . . . show no respect to the legal system or anybody working in it.”” Is tantamount to insighting revolt and rebellion, and encouraging people to do things they might not otherwise do, based upon an argueably half baked fact that you cannot justify or prove.
We are anonymous bloggers too that have taken on the corrruption and fraud in the investment property world and have gone to great lengths to protect our anonymity to prevent reprisals. When writing though, we are certain and can provide proof of every comment we make, or if we state opinion, we make it very clear that that is exactly what it is.
Just to say that as a blogger (under my own name) and conservative-minded person I disagree with most of these comments:
The problem is that if you give someone the right to speak out anonymously, you deny someone else the right to say in reply, “I know who you are … you’re X!” Not exactly fair either?
Further explained on my own site (including several earlier postings).
[...] Those who think NightJack was a little naive in his attempt to remain anonymous: Eg. Letter from a Tory [...]
[...] – denken, dass NightJack etwas naiv war beim Versuch anonym zu bleiben, z.B. Letter from a Tory. [...]
[...] Those who think NightJack was a little naive in his attempt to remain anonymous: Eg. Letter from a Tory [...]