"I am Spartacus"

[fpb]

Right. This is a bit late, now that Wikipedia is in on the act, but I still want to do it:

Ryan Giggs, the Manchester United football star, committed adultery with Imogen Thomas and then tried to forbid anyone from hearing about it by the use of a "super-injunction" - one of the corrupt British judiciary's worst outrages against freedom of speech. Now sue me, you spoilt, overindulged, cowardly little bully.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't have allowed this to focus on Giggs. It's not about him, except in so far as he gleefully made use of a corrupt and repulsive system. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/may/22/nick-cohen-fred-goodwin-superinjunctions - I agree with every word. Reflect, in particular, on the catastrophic effect on the country and its people of the conspiracy between judges. lawyers and bankers.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

To quote from the article you linked

Despite the protests of tabloid editors, citizens have a right to privacy. No privacy and Google and Facebook could use your data as they pleased, police officers and prosecutors could force defendants to incriminate themselves and the state could spy on citizens without showing due cause. I doubt even the editor of the Daily Mail would welcome an "open society" quite as open as that.

But because the British are obsessed with and frightened of sex, we have reduced a complex legal debate to one question: who is pleasuring whom? I concede that the answers should generally remain private and that people have a right to keep their affairs to themselves, if and only if, there is no public interest in disclosure.

This seems closer to my position than yours? It now comes down to a discussion of what is in the public interest.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Google and Facebook DO use our data as they please, and it is only what the law allows of openness and investigation that even allows us to know that it is going on and do anything about it. You could not possibly have thought up a worse argument for a "right of privacy", and neither could Nick Cohen. And what on Earth is wrong with forcing a criminal to incriminate himself? I can see no moral objection against that, only a silly notion of criminal investigation as a gentlemanly game where everyone pulls up their stumps at the end, take off their shinpads and go home; but criminal investigation is investigation into evil things, and I see no reason why a criminal should shield himself behind a supposed right to privacy. As for the state spying on citizens without showing due cause, that is not corrected by another abuse, but by defining the rights and responsibilities of the State.

[stigandnasty919.livejournal.com]

I thought you agreed with every word of his article? I'm puzzled.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

So I was overenthusiastic.Have you never found an article that said so many things you agreed with, that you failed to notice one or two deadly items?

(BTW, Nick Cohen is one of the most fanatical and unreasoning atheists in the UK, so you don't have to think I agree with him on everything. But on freedom of thought, speech, expression and the Press, he is sound.)

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Nick Cohen is sound on quite a few things; and it's very difficult to find someone one agrees with 100%...

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I had not seen this on Fred The Shred! *hunkers down to read*

[fpb.livejournal.com]

And you a journalist, too. See how easy it is to suppress really significant stories?