Quintin Jardine's blog

Over tha last couple of days, the UK news media have been full of  a story about Twitter, the social networking site, being used to get round so-called super-injunctions issued by English courts to protect the privacy of the rich and famous, for example, Andrew Marr, the journalist and broadcaster, who has admitted using one to prevent his colleagues from reporting the fact (note; fact, not allegation) of an extra-marital affair. When these things are in place, British media outlets are forbidden from even reporting the fact that they exist, on pain of imprisonment. But Twitter isn’t a UK based organisation, and it’s been used to drive a coach and horses through that prohibition.

Good or bad, national law provides the infrastructure for real people to live their lives. Bottom line, it’s what protects us. Now it seems that the internet has abolished frontiers and that it allows people to disregard the law of their own country, simply by setting up an offshore social networking user account. Hey, come on!

But is the internet beyond our control, and shouldn’t our government be doing more to defend us? Twitter is based, as I understand it, in San Francisco, and it’s just facilitated a contempt of court that would have landed a British newspaper editor in jail. If the geography was reversed, and a Federal offence had been committed by a British based organisation, you can bet that arrest warrants would have been issued in Washington by now. For example, the US government is tackling internet gambling in exactly that way. Those businesses are legal and respectable in most other countries, but outlawed in most US states. Victor Chandler and Fred Done have become TV personalities in the UK. If they included America in their sphere of operations they’d be arrested if they set foot there, as other people have been.

I wouldn’t defend super-injunctions, not in the way that some seem to have been used. But I would defend the rule of law, and I believe that it’s time our Attorney General showed some willingness to do so by tackling the Twitter breach head-on.I’m not suggesting a Special Forces raid on the Twitter HQ, but surely there is a duty to defend our legal system. I don’t care if **** ***** has been shagging a ‘former Big Brother housemate’, indeed I can’t think of anything that interests me less, but I do care when my national institutions come under cyber-attack, and that’s what’s happened here.