All Posts Tagged With: "Privacy"
Nothing will stop the Red Tops invading royal privacy
You can’t blame Prince Charles’ press secretary, Paddy Harveson for advising the Royal Family to write, through their solicitors, to the editors of Britain’s national newspapers and magazines with a request that they respect the Law, the Press Complaints Commission Editors’ Code and the privacy of the Royal Family by not sending their own photographers to Sandringham (other than for the traditional Christmas Day church shots) and by refusing to buy speculative, free-lance paparazzi shots from the army of shameless, opportunistic wannabe snappers that will surround and trespass on the family’s private grounds at Sandringham over the Christmas holiday.
There’s not much chance of the editors complying, though.
They’ll justify their publishing of intrusive shots with the excuse that public have a ‘right to know’, and will buy their papers if they offer shots of the hapless Kate Middleton caught like a fawn in a pair of car headlamps.
Prince William deserves some understanding for not wanting to see a repeat of what happened to his mother. It would be heartening if the public refused to be seduced by these low appeals to their prurience, and refused to buy the papers that try it on.
Sadly, there’s not much chance of that either.
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Mobile phone databases plundered
You could soon be getting calls on your mobile phone asking if you want to speak to any number of cold callers, nosy parkers, tabloid gossip hacks or council snoopers
A new company called Connectivity [www.118800.co.uk] is about to start offering a service which allows you to dial 118800, give an individual’s name and address, when they’ll try to connect you with any of 42 million British mobile users.
They claim that the call recipients’ privacy is protected because they do not give out their numbers. They send a text or leave a voicemail announcing that someone would like to talk to them (with a caller’s name given) and a number on which to call them back (presumably at their own expense). However, it’s clear from the demo call currently on the 118800.co.uk website that callers could give any name they thought likely the recipient would respond to – perhaps even a specifically enticing one.
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Anti-censorship campaigner out of focus on protection of privacy
Jo Glanville is a well-regarded journalist and former BBC producer with a special interest in Israeli-Palestinian affairs. Since December 2006 she has been a professional campaigner against international censorship as editor of INDEX ON CENSORSHIP, an organisation dedicated to fighting any constraints on reporting by the world’s media.
It is a valid and necessary aim in a world where totalitarian regimes routinely control the flow of information to their populations as much as they can. It isn’t evident from their website who funds the organisation. Broadly, one must assume, individuals and bodies committed to international freedom of expression. It seems likely, too, that some newspapers might support it.
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Real prospects for protection of public privacy?
The Media Standards Trust is concerned with protecting the freedom of the press and protecting the public from harm. They are dedicated to achieving the fairest and most fruitful balance between these contrasting points.
Their report published this week, A More Accountable Press makes a strong and publicly supported case for more effective curbs on excessive breaches of personal privacy by some sectors of the press.
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Government plans to share our personal data must be stopped.
The British government is keen to justify Clause 152, which has been hidden like a small, nasty landmine beneath the surface of the Coroners’ and Justice Bill currently subject to the scrutiny of our legislators.
The Government claims that this clause will, among other things, streamline bureaucracy for bereaved families, who sometimes have to notify up to 43 different government agencies, although your MP would be pressed to name more than half a dozen of them.
From the way the clause has been slipped in and justified, it’s hard not to conclude that it is yet another attempt to allow clandestine Data Creep, by which ministers will be able to order widespread data-sharing not only between government departments, but also with local authorities (notoriously cavalier about personal privacy) and in some circumstances with private sector companies.
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Parliament must clarify Privacy Law with clear legislation.
BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour last Saturday featured a short debate between Conservative MP Nick Herbert and Alfred (Lord) Dubbs about the use of Cl.8 of the Human Rights Act in recent privacy cases. Herbert, like Mail editor Paul Dacre, argues that Parliament, not judges should be making any new laws on invasion of privacy.
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The DNA profiles of millions of innocent Britains made safe from the snoopers.
There is a curious and pleasing irony in the European Court of Human Rights’ decision in favour of the Sheffield Two, who have fought the British police through all domestic courts to have details of their DNA profiles removed from a national criminal register. The ruling as been almost universally applauded here, not least by those sections of the British public – the UKIP, the BNP and Tories of Little England tendencies – who most deplore the concept of “Europe” and indeed “Human Rights”.
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Ginger whinger
For an editor of a national newspaper – if you choose to call the Sun a newspaper when there’s a strong case for reclassifying it as a comic – Rebekah Wade has a pretty flaky idea of how the law works. She told the Guardian today:
The point of concern is there is just one man making the law by setting a precedent sitting on his own. In a democracy that cannot be good for society. The point of having one solitary judge who is unelected and unaccountable who is setting a precedent in British law … I think a lot of people will be surprised that he sat alone in the Max Mosley case because there’s no jury in privacy cases.
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The Spluttering Man from the Soaraway Sun
It was fun on the BBC’s Today programme this morning to hear a stuttering, burbling, ill-informed Graham Dudman – managing editor of the Sun, attempting feebly to defend the right of the popular press to plaster private details of individuals’ lives all over the pages of their unpleasant little organ.
Like every Shag-Rag editor, Dudman agreed with Paul Dacre’s claim yesterday that Mr Justice Eady was introducing a privacy law “through the back door.”
He contended that if these papers didn’t give their readers the vicarious smut they craved that somehow the standards of our national press would decline. Any claim that papers like the Sun, or the Screws or the Mail uphold any kind of journalistic standards is laughable.
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Mosley wants to set up a Libel Fund for the less rich
Max Mosley is pursuing several libel actions around Europe against publications who were careless enough to repeat the News of the World’s allegations that he had engaged five dominatrices for a Nazi style orgy – now believed by most of us in court to have been, beyond doubt, invented by Screws hack, Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck.
Mosley has suggested that he might use some of the proceeds of these libel actions (and it’s likely he’ll win several of them) to set up a fund so that those less rich than he could also pursue the Wapping lie-factory next time they transgress.
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Hello Peter
Listening to you at the Leveson Inquiry today, I thought you might be interested to have a look at ...
@Fleur,
I suspect he still has a job because he knows where the bodies are buried. 
Not much to write home about Neville? 
hi peter,great website. i bought your book news of the world and managed to get hold of CAMERA ASSASSIN 2 ...
they finally caught the little toad if he can lie at a small tribunal he certainly can rely on ...