Who cares? The only issue here involves the use of our legal system for matters irrelevant. 18 months ago, 6 witnesses against very violent druggies (explosives and a very violent murder involved) were guaranteed anonymity in court. They had taken a lot of encouragement. The first gave her evidence from behind a screen and then the clerk to the court read out her name and address. The murder involved a brush stale being rammed up where the sun don’t shine into a lung. Ryan Giggs!
Surely there are more important issues for our votaries to get themselves involved with! Anonymous complaints about local scum published in social media might very well be a good thing if we designed it properly. It may be that all the fuss we can make on privacy is outdated and only arises out of vested interests. As usual, the situation is really regulated by fears of what scum might do – false allegations, blackmail and so on.
One possibility is to allow anything on the Internet to be published by an ‘institution of record’ that chooses to and let any legal action be decided on the truth of that. We might then assume all as gossip until such publication.
When the MP named Giggsy under Parliamentary privilege, he mentioned it was impractical to jail over one hundred thousand people who had done so on twitter. Did he understand potential power to the people this would involve? Or remember that one amorous lad has been dragged before the courts for a comment many of us might have made delayed by snow at Robin Hood Airport (also more important to our freedom than Giggsygate).
Giggs is presumably now just a pawn in the hands of his lawyers. The arrogance of suing Twitter beggars belief, involving the threat to jail.
Of course, the real establishment fear is that we might find some genuine way to express and govern ourselves and stop the leeching of wealth to a few. Giggs must know what a level playing field is. Pity we have none in our legal system.
Allcoppedout's Blog 