Can IC help MPs define Privacy? (9)

Still, for those here who would prefer to maintain their privacy (and setting aside the non-trivial issue of how, indeed if, international digital media can be handled) what advice could IC put forward to the joint committee the Prime Minister has suggested is the next step in the great privacy controversy.

Various comments from ministers recognise defining a solution is not easy, and tend towards beefing up PCC sanctions - passing the case by case buck to the PCC.

Reading the two footballer judgements today about which the tabloids are frothing, it is clear there was no attempt by the tabloids to make a public interest case. http://bit.ly/l5Nolp http://bit.ly/iDzIvm They simply don't care. So, unto the breach dear friends...

Should MP's define "serious impropriety" more clearly? How (no sniggering)? A list of unacceptable activities?

Should "Everyone" be clarified, so as to exclude say, people with more than 50k followers on social media? Or anyone who appoints Max Clifford to represent them?

Should there be a list of "justifiable intrusions" to guide judges?

Tricky, n'est pas.

To save you valuable time, below here is the current "law" (though without case law, which are covered in the two judgements linked above).

The operative bit of the existing law from 1998 says "The court must have particular regard to the importance of the Convention right to freedom of expression and, where the proceedings relate to material which the respondent claims, or which appears to the court, to be journalistic, literary or artistic material (or to conduct connected with such material), to—

(a) the extent to which—

(i) the material has, or is about to, become available to the public; or

(ii) it is, or would be, in the public interest for the material to be published;

(b) any relevant privacy code."

where for the UK press the relevant (Press Complaints Commission) code provides

3.Privacy

i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications.

ii) Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual's private life without consent. Account will be taken of the complainant's own public disclosures of information.

There may be exceptions ... where they can be demonstrated to be in the public interest.

1. The public interest includes, but is not confined to:

i) Detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety.

ii) Protecting public health and safety.

iii) Preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation.

2. There is a public interest in freedom of expression itself.

3. Whenever the public interest is invoked, the PCC will require editors to demonstrate fully that they reasonably believed that publication, or journalistic activity undertaken with a view to publication, would be in the public interest.

4. The PCC will consider the extent to which material is already in the public domain, or will become so.

5. In cases involving children under 16, editors must demonstrate an exceptional public interest to over-ride the normally paramount interest of the child.

Then the issue of what should be kept confidential and what should not is always going to be hard. A bishop preaching against homosexuality who lives with 2 homosexual lovers I'd say could be outed. If Mr Goodwin was spending 4 hours a day in brookmc upboard with his colleague whom everyone knows but we are not allowed to name such that he couldn't do his job properly then that should be outed.

If it had no effect on his work and didn't break the bank's code then fine - it's private although it would still be better to divorce Mrs G before playing around with anyone else.

The world of digital information means if someone wants information on any one person, they'll get it. We the users enter our details into IC, Facebook and any other online storage medium under the security terms at that specific time. Be sure that you as an individual are comfortable sharing all this as the law changes according to many factors. This could leave you exposed and compromised.

Or you could just use a sock puppet....

Bounder.
Gag'er.
Cad.
www.masqueradeofmischief.com

I think the tension between the two is particularly exacerbated with respect to the third public interest prong quoted by the OP: "preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation". So does that mean that if a famous sportsman uses his image as a happy family man to get lucrative sponsorships, when he fact he is having or has a sordid affair, the public is being mislead as to his character? possibly so, depending on the facts. What if he wasn't having an affair, but was paying for porn when he stays in hotels, would that be misleading in terms of his "family image"? you can see how difficult the misleading test is with these two simple examples..

The other tough one is the alternative test that relates to the extent to which the material has, or is about to, become available to the public - so if someone breaches confidence and it is being twittered, then this test would basically always be met. So does that encourage sleazy investigators to pay bribes to get access inapproprately to infomation, or hacking of phones/emails?

The real issue is that the press is all too happy to breach the privacy rules for commercial gain, because the sanctions they face are risible - to use the Max Moseley example, less than £100,000 for outing private consensual activities? I think that was pretty cheap for the press considering the profits they undoubtedly realised through their coverage. (And the fact that you may or may not dislike MM or think that it is sleazy to have an affair is neither here nor there - he and we either have a right to privacy for our private, consensual sexual activties or we don't, it isn't only "appealing" or sympathetic or endearing people who are entitled to privacy!).

Last thought - the press always argues that a right to privacy would prevent legitimate investigative journalism. I don't actually think that is true because the public interest test is broadly defined (as noted above, detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety - protecting public health and safety - preventing the public from being misled by an action or statement) and the vast majority of legitimate investigative journalism *will* meet one of those tests.

I also hope that the lawmakers will look at what rules are in effect in other European countries, because they don't seem to have quite the farcical situation we have in the UK, so perhaps they are doing something right when it comes to balancing the right to privacy and freedom of speech/press (maybe even something better than us!)

Anyway, just my rambling thoughts...

There's a somebody I'm longing to see, I hope that he turns out to be, someone to watch over me
I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood, I know I could always be good, to one who'll watch over me (Ella Fitzgerald)

Is it any wonder that we can't get UK citizens to take a sensible interest in the future of the country, voting, etc. when their so-called newspapers carry "celebrity" stories on their front pages rather than dealing with real events taking place here and across the world?

Maybe it is about time the [gutter] press started to take more responsibility for the social decline their reporting is responsible for. Yes it may be ok to report a story about a personalities immoral behaviour but doing so in such an overtly titillating manner calls into question not only the morals of the in question 'victim' but those of the Editor also.

Amusingly, Perhaps if every person were allowed to trademark their name it would be much cheaper to sue the media for using it as a profit magnet.

SOS

The Titter group - for when you don't feel too serious.
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. - Mahatma Gandhi
www.Londonmunch.co.uk
Londonmunch@hotmail.com - Enquiries

To me, one service the Press provides society is being a conduit for the concept of moral hazard, the idea that there is a penalty to pay for stepping beyond a certain way of behaving, expressing yourself, treating others etc. The Press's role is the "tut-tut" type of comment which your friends and family do to point out you've been a silly-billy and not a judge's "send him down". The Press patrol society's moral, ethical as well legal boundaries and justly bring to everyone's attention behaviour which is beyond the pale - it's "in the public interest" for that to occur. But "bring to people's attention" is the service while "mercilessly profiteer", "character assassinate" or "trial-by-press" are not.

So, for example, our society currently views adultery as grounds for divorce and therefore adultery is beyond the acceptable boundaries of behaviour and such behaviour by someone in our society should be made public as being a "silly-billy". However, I'd more favour adding another column at the back of the paper called 'adulterers' amongst births, marriages and deaths and name and shame all that are known than focus exclusively on the witch hunt of just one. If society says it's wrong to be an adulterer then it's right for adulterers to be named and shamed so that there's a moral hazard associated with being found out. It's wrong to say it's wrong know when it's wrong to do what was said was done.

But if/when citizens live in fear of their personal lives being made public by an out-of-control Press then control the Press. Change Privacy to Data Protection and let the Press prove prior to publication that transgressions against society have or could happen or which are in the public interest of maintaining moral hazard to know about. Let the burden of cost and procedure fall to the Press at their expense prior to publication instead of falling to subjects of damning coverage who have to prove their innocence and non-involvement afterwards.

Most of what gets published gets published consensually anyway; everything which happens observably in the public domain is by definition public; anyone seeking publicity or self promotion will consent to those aspects of their life being made public too. But unless such people have a hidden part of their life which is beyond society's ethical, moral or legal boundaries there should be absolutely no right of publication obtained simply through possessing or coming into possession of information for which a consent to publish does not exist at all. Ideally that's the nature of a responsible Press (to not publish that for which consent does not exist), otherwise it's the nature of Data Protection legislation (personal data is private). Only when it is in the public interest to know that society is undermined by the what or who these people are or what they can or do do in their private life must it be possible for such knowledge to be made public by some means. So for example it would always be key that something like child-molesting Catholic priests is publicised in our society, but known with accuracy precisely who and not just any individual who was Catholic and a priest.

Yes, the Press should still be key in their role as a conduit for a sense of moral hazard; but neither should they be exempt from it themselves. In the way a policeman can arrest someone for speeding and be arrested themself if they speed too the press should be able to report behaviour beyond the pale but expect to be the story themselves when they behave reprehensibly as well. In a recent case a landlord of a murdered tenant was hounded, tried, convicted and punished by the Press only for them to find out that someone else will be put on trial for the crime. The landlord has had to sell his property and go and live somewhere else because the Press got it wrong. Which person in the Press is in custody for ruining someone's life? None, of course. And yet the people of the Press are citizens first and Press second, so they shouldn't be beyond reproach; there has to be a moral hazard associated with reporting in the Press; there has to be responsibility; either restraint before you publish or by means of admitting failure afterwards.

A process akin to Japanese public apologies would do for the Press, I think. Just enough public shame to make them think they'd never like to go through it all again. And a reduction in pay to make absolutely sure they don't.

There might be little wrong with the Privacy law at present if accountability for intrusions and justice for those who ruin people's lives really occurred. If there were true penalties for getting it wrong it would be got right more often. Otherwise it's Data Protection for all and to hell with Freedom of Speech.

"Fork handles?" "No, not 'fork handles' ... four candles."

Actually I couldn't agree more.

Example when my blog was up and running I quoted something that a pro domme friend of mine had tweeted on twitter. Pure humour amongst friends and something that my blog followers would have seen the funny side of. Harmless fun and me and my humor. Anyway unfortunately she threw her rattle out of the pram and didn't see the funny side. I insisted it was open source being on the internet and as such any one could re tweet, including journos.

AND recent history has proved a judge saying that bloggers had no right to privacy.

All I can say is be careful what you put on line, it may well come back and bite you on the backside and believe me, once it's out there, it's there for life......

no, but it could run the country better

Either: a) None whatsoever, since we can't agree on anything; or b) Bad, since it will have been framed by those on here with secrets they wish to preserve.

Possibly because the public interest is so blindingly obvious that only Mister Justice Eady could possibly be sufficiently derelict of his duty not to see it?

Nobody cares what the footballers get up to. What matters is that they have demonstrated that they will do almost anything to keep their secrets. Next time a Premiership footballer gets sent off in the 42nd minute of a match - just ask yourself, was that a genuine sending off, or did a Chinese or Indian betting ring threaten to expose him if he didn't get sent off in the 42nd minute?

Secrets (sexual, financial, addiction, kleptmania, even a toupee) mean blackmail. And blackmail is, front and centre, a matter of public interest.

And that's just sport. CEO of a major bank that's heading for the rocks? A Senior Treasury minister? Head of a motor racing organisation whose job consists of little more than handing out jobs on influential and lucrative committees? In all of these the public interest is obvious. And yet, in all the cases which have actually gone to the high court, the public interest has been conspicuously ignored.

I'm normally with J K Galbraith and believe that one should never ascribe to malice what can adequately be described by incompetence. But it's becoming increasingly difficult to see how Justices Eady and Tugendhat could be that incompetent, for that long, and have held on to their posts.

Only in cases where the complainant is genuinely obscure or genuinely has no influence over affairs is the public interest unlikely to be served by publication. (Which cases are, ironically, the only ones likely to genuinely affect IC'ers, and the only requests for injunctions which are likely not to be granted under the current regime, due to lack of money on the complainant's part....)

Before the election, the current PM was gung-ho for a Bill of Rights in this country. If he's serious about that, then we badly need some equivalent of the First Amendment. And judges who don't shirk their duty.....