Thousands of fans chant his name at match
Does ANYONE still not know who they're all talking about?
A
footballer's court battle to keep his alleged affair secret has
provoked one of the biggest acts of civil disobedience in modern times.
The face of the star alleged to have taken out a privacy injunction was yesterday published by a Scots newspaper.
Football
fans mockingly chanted his name at a match with a worldwide audience.
And he was mentioned more than 30,000 times on Twitter, helping to
ensure that anyone still unaware of his identity can discover it with a
few clicks of a mouse.
Lady in red: A premiership footballer, who has
tried to gag the press over his affair with Imogen Thomas has been named
by a Scottish newspaper and was linked to her more than 30,000 times on
Twitter
Within 24 hours of the player launching the new
legal challenge, more than 12,000 tweets about him and the relationship
appeared on the site. Here are some of them with the player's name
blacked out
The dramatic backlash took its cue
from MPs and peers who have spoken against injunctions. It left judges
facing an overwhelming task if they try to maintain the gagging order
while preserving any shreds of respect for the courts and their privacy
laws.
One MP suggested that
only a minority of people have not now heard a name for the Premier
League footballer, who was granted a privacy injunction in April which
forbade publication of his name or allegations that he had a six-month
affair with former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas.
Internet
speculation on his identity began within a week, was fuelled by an MP
who blurted out his name during the recording of a television programme,
and was helped along by Miss Thomas, who has complained frequently that
she can be named and her reputation has been traduced.
The
Glasgow-based Sunday Herald yesterday published a picture of the
player on its front page, clearly identifiable despite a bar placed
over his eyes.
It named him inside the paper and added that his
action against Twitter ‘raises questions over the future of free speech
on social media sites’.
The paper has a circulation of just over 30,000, which means it is likely to be read by between 75,000 and 100,000 people.
The censored Twitter messages relating to an
injunction brought out by another footballer of an international TV
star, a pop singer, an author and a comedian
Spotlight: Former Big Brother star Imogen Thomas (L) shopping with a friend at the weekend
The
effect of English privacy injunctions in Scotland has been a legal grey
area. Scotland has a separate legal system and in the landmark
Spycatcher case in 1986, Scottish newspapers ignored English judges and
published material from the banned book by a former MI5 agent.
But
Scottish newspapers circulate in England and their editors have been
careful until now to stick by the letter of privacy injunctions.
Paul
McBride QC, the Sunday Herald's legal adviser, said it was unacceptable
for unelected judges to make the decisions to grant injunctions in
private.
Speaking on
BBC Radio Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme, Mr McBride said
there needed to be a debate about the way forward over granting privacy
injunctions.
He said:
'Parliament now have to look at this issue. We can't have unelected
judges making these decisions in private when we have the internet out
there where everyone can access the information they're trying to keep
secret.
'We had the
absurd position this week of even MPs in our democratically elected
Parliament being threatened with potential contempt of court by using
their parliamentary privilege to name people. That's not acceptable
anymore.'
Mr McBride
added: 'We're having this kind of surreal, parallel universe
conversation where everyone with a mobile phone and access to the
internet knows who the individual is but mainstream news organisations
can't publish his name.
'In
the case of the Sunday Herald, the decision was one of principle. The
so-called super-injunction didn't apply in this particular jurisdiction
and those representing the particular individual didn't take precautions
to apply for an interdict in Scotland.
'In
relation to the Sunday Herald article there was no discussion about the
individual's private life it was simply to name him as the person who
was using a tool of law which has widely now been brought into
disrepute.'
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond
said it would be 'extremely foolish' for the Attorney General in England
to try to start proceedings against a Scottish publication.
'I think it would be very, very
unlikely that an Attorney General would be as foolish as to do so,' he
told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.
'I think the political issue is whether it is tenable to pursue this sort of injunction.
'I would have thought there is an
increasing view it is untenable to do so. There is a whole question of
what is of interest to the public and what is in the public interest,
which can often be different things.
'But the law essentially is a
practical thing. It looks to me like English law and English injunctions
are increasingly impractical in the modern world.'
Mr Salmond ridiculed the idea that English court rules on any subject 'should pertain across the planet'.
The
alleged footballer’s name and a sexual allegation was chanted by his
club’s supporters at a Premiership match yesterday. And he was mentioned
in connection with the privacy case in the online reference site
Wikipedia.
Lib Dem MP John Hemming, who has campaigned against privacy injunctions, said: ‘This is an oppressive and sinister farce.’
Mr
Hemming, who first identified disgraced banker Sir Fred Goodwin in
connection with a super-injunction in the Commons, said: ‘The judges are
trying to reverse the tide of civil disobedience with draconian
attempts to suppress the truth.
‘But this is now the biggest wave of
civil disobedience anyone can remember. There are at least 30,000 people
defying the judges on the internet.’
He added: ‘People are finding
that the more you try to suppress something on the internet, the more it
is published. Attempts to silence the internet are much more in the
interest of the lawyers than the footballers.’
The open defiance of
the privacy laws, developed by judges on the back of Labour’s Human
Rights Act, has mushroomed to unprecedented levels thanks to the
internet.
Last week Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger, backed by
Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, threatened to restrict reporting of
Parliament in the attempt to shore up the effectiveness of secrecy
injunctions.
The judges are to stage talks with Commons Speaker John
Bercow and Lords Speaker Baroness Hayman to try to stop MPs and peers
using Parliamentary privilege to name those who have been given
injunctions.
Judges have also been told that in future privacy
injunctions should ban anyone from gossiping about names involved, and
newspapers should pass on the names of all journalists in the know to
the lawyers of celebrities with injunctions.
Yesterday Tory MP
Douglas Carswell said the law is ‘an ass’. He added: ‘Mr Bercow should
remind the judges that the Commons is elected – and it is their
Lordships’ appetite for self-aggrandisement that has left them looking
asinine.'
Several celebrities, including XXXX XXXXXX, the broadcaster, author and XXXX XX XXXXXX columnist, XXX XXXXX, the singer, and the comedians XXXX XXXXXXX and XXX XXXX
are among those who posted tweets at the weekend which either
identified the star in connection to the relationship or heavily hinted
at his involvement.
The attempt to silence Twitter may
turn into an own goal because several of the celebrity tweeters have
followings which far exceed the circulations of some of the newspapers
the star is trying to silence.
Alan
Stevens, who advises businesses on social media, said the attempt to
silence Twitter was like ‘pouring petrol on the flames’.
He said: ‘It is like that famous scene in Spartacus where everyone puts their hand up and claims to be the hero of the piece.
‘Everyone on Twitter is now queuing up to name that footballer.
‘There are so many people out there
talking about it, you might as well say you can’t talk on the phone or
in the pub about something.’
TV star who tweeted footballer's name could be jailed... and NO ONE would know
For the first time in centuries someone could be sent to prison in Britain and no one would be allowed to know who they were.
The
sinister scenario emerged yesterday when it was revealed a TV
personality was facing jail for repeating the name of an England
footballer with a privacy injunction.
If
the media personality is named in any trial for contempt of court then
the footballer’s injunction will be effectively broken. So if judges are
to keep to the terms of the injunction the trial is meant to protect,
he cannot be named.
Hidden: The TV star who repeated the footballer's name on Twitter could be secretly sent to prison
Yesterday they were warned that any
move to imprison someone while keeping their identity secret would be
‘absolutely against the principles of open justice.’
The
Kafka-esque twist in the privacy law row comes after a judge acted on
complaints from the footballer’s lawyers. They protested his gagging
order had been broken by the media celebrity on Twitter.
The
complaint could end in a test-case trial for contempt of court and a
range of possible punishments, from a minor fine up to imprisonment.
However at present the individual cannot be named, because to do so would be to break the footballer’s privacy injunction.
Although
his Twitter postings which identified the footballer have been taken
down, they have been copied by other websites and there is
easily-discovered internet speculation linking the celebrity with the
footballer.
No one is thought to have been sentenced and punished by English courts for centuries without being publicly named.
In
the recent past a number of foreign terrorist suspects who were unnamed
have been held in prison. But their detention, which was stopped after
a House of Lords ruling, did not follow trial and conviction, and they
would have been released at any time if they had agreed to be deported.
They
could also have allowed their names to be published if they had wished.
The celebrity named the married footballer, who is alleged to have had
an affair, in tweets during a recent notable football match. A series of
messages joked at the player’s expense.
Last
Thursday Mr Justice Tugendhat agreed to refer the celebrity’s behaviour
to the Attorney General, who must decide whether to bring a prosecution
for contempt. It was the first time a judge has sent an alleged breach
of a privacy injunction for consideration for a contempt prosecution.
The
Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, must decide whether it is in the
public interest to bring a prosecution. If he recommends prosecution,
the trial will go ahead in the Divisional Court, a section of the High
Court, presided over by two senior judges. There would be no jury so
the celebrity could not hope to escape conviction because the ordinary
people who compose a jury thought the charges against him were
ridiculous.
A spokesman for
the Attorney General said he had yet to receive the referral and was
unable to comment. The celebrity, who appears in a popular BBC TV
programme and writes for a major newspaper, said: ‘I don’t understand
how it can be contempt of court but if it is I need to be quite careful
about what is being said. The courts take contempt matters very
seriously and I don’t want to get in any trouble with the courts.’
7:43 AM
World Top Stories News - Scottish paper prints picture of super-injunction footballer as 30,000 unmask him on Twitter : A footballer's court battle to keep his alleged affair secret has provoked one of the biggest acts of civil disobedience in modern times.
