At Skepticlawyer, Legal Eagle has written a fascinating post on the bizarrely named case cited above, which was heard recently in the British High Court. As she writes:
“The Author of A Blog” cited as the claimant was the pseudonymous author of a blog known as “Night Jack”. He was a police officer whose blog provided an inside view of police procedure, the seamy side of life and the law. In April this year, the Night Jack blog received the Orwell Prize for political blogging. However, after this, Patrick Foster, a journalist from The Times, determined to work out the identity of the blogger using internet research. Foster has justified his actions on the basis that the Night Jack blogger “was…using the blog to disclose detailed information about cases he had investigated, which could be traced back to real-life prosecutions.”
The blogger sought an interim injunction to restrain Times Newspapers Ltd from publishing any information that would identify him. Although an injunction was granted up until the time of judgment, the High Court ultimately refused the claimant’s application. The officer has been revealed to be Richard Horton, a detective constable with Lancashire Constabulary.
Legal Eagle draws an interesting inference from all this about Foster’s motivations:
I can’t help finding the action of The Times rather petty and malicious. For some reason, some journalists seem to despise blogging and bloggers (eg, an article in The Australian the other day to which I can’t even be bothered linking). There’s a suspicion in my mind that this journalist thought to himself, Let’s bring down a blogger who is writing something that is interesting and exciting.
Mark,
It is my impression that many journos feel directly threatened by blogs – what’s happened in the US with several large papers going bust and some of the journos starting online versions seems to have made quite an impact.
Once upon a time the attitude was “oh, look at that cute little blogger attempting to do my job” (still the attitude at the OO in some form), now it seems to be “that person is stealing stories I should have and threatening my job”.
Never mind that many bloggers are lamenting the loss of many good journolists and seem to be very supportive of their role.
Add in the modern UK government obsession with security and pushing many anti-terrorist roles onto the police, and the end result is that a blogger with knowledge (who didn’t follow the party line), and you’ve got a situation where a mainstream journo might feel fully justified in doing this. They would see it as a public service and would probably do similar to anyone working in other government/business roles. It reminds me markedly of the regular crude attempts of various software security firms in attacking people who reveal holes in their security. Attacking the external source of conflict is far easier than confronting the problems within.
I’m sure if certain un-named OO journos felt they could do such a thing to you or Possum then they would (and the self-rightous tone would be the same). Kind of ironic that someone who would regard such a blogger as “just another no-good leftie” is behaving in such a Stalinist fashion
“Let’s bring down a blogger who is writing something that is interesting and exciting.”
or even ‘lets try and make an example of one of these “so and so’s” and try and scare them off”
There are clearly many journo’s who’ve welcomed blogging and taken to it like ducks to water but there is also clearly a subset that have revealed themselves to be jealous nasty little pieces of work. They are also trying to hold back the tide.
And copping a deserving whacking from online commentators to their justification:
comments
I liked this one:
I don’t normally leave comments when I share the views of the majority commenting, but sometimes there is power in numbers. The Times got this one hopelessly, pathetically, unequivocally wrong. This wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, this was a conscious, malicious, budget forms signing, barrister retaining, lunches on expenses, £200 an hour, paper-lodging, oak-beamed courtroom, long-lasting court action against a bloke doing a bloody good job.
Who cares if he’s anonymous? Why not let the police unmask him if it was that big a deal? The awful thing is that this wouldn’t have been a one-man show, it would have involved an editorial chain of command, not one of whom had the balls to stand up and say “are we really doing the right thing here?” But let me guess, the law allows you to do it so you’ve not actually done anything wrong. Now, where’ve I heard that before?
Whilst I have quite a bit of sympathy for the blogger, I think that if you’re going to blog in detail about the work you do, and possibly disclose information that would not be normally easily public accessible you should do it with the permission of your employer. The technology savy organisations do understand the advantages of having their employees blog and allow them to do so within fairly reasonable guidelines. Same goes for twitter, facebook etc.
Chris writes,
“if you’re going to blog in detail about the work you do, and possibly disclose information that would not be normally easily public accessible you should do it with the permission of your employer.”
It’s usually a bit hard to get the permission of your employer to reveal details of people doing illegal and immoral things in your workplace. Which is what this copper was doing.
The mainstream journos were upset. In the pre-net days, the copper would have had to go to a journo to be an “anonymous source”, and the journo could become famous as an “investigative journalist.” The cop-blogger cut out the useless middleman. Demarcation, as the union types like to say, demarcation.
I wonder how long it will take for ‘Bystander’ (the anonymous English magistrate with a blog) to be exposed in likewise fashion.
http://thelawwestofealingbroadway.blogspot.com/
Bystander is a “soft” hitter. There won’t be the same degree of will to expose him.
Nightjack had balls.
Yeah, Steve, I don’t think I’m nearly as brave as NightJack. Being a lawyer tends to make you wary.
Kia @ 5 – I wasn’t a follower of his blog and its been pulled down now, but from what I’ve been able to see that has been republished in the past on other sites it didn’t seem to be an expose on illegal actions by fellow police officers. More about the every day job of a policeman. I think the bits I read were well written and very interesting. I’d like to see more people in government organisations being able to blog in a similar way. But I didn’t see any whistle-blower type material.
And if he was aware of illegal actions by fellow police, wouldn’t setting up a blog about it be one of the last resorts if your primary concern was getting the problem fixed quickly? Building up adequate reputation to make an impact is going to take much longer than reporting the behaviour through the usual channels, going to an MP or even going to a reasonably reputable reporter.
I also think there are some valid concerns about what people in positions of trust and power (such as police) should be able to publicly disclose without very good reason. Some of his entries described interviews with victims – should they have been able to expect a certain level of privacy? What impact would it have on them if a victim recognised their case on a website without being warned first? And would victims and witnesses be more reticent about talking to police if they thought they might be talking to the police blogger?
“from what I’ve been able to see that has been republished in the past on other sites it didn’t seem to be an expose on illegal actions by fellow police officers.”
Yes and no. There are many things police officers do which are illegal, but not necessarily criminal, or which are not illegal but which would be embarrassing to the police if more widely-known.
I dated a state police officer once. Some incidents:
I went to a BBQ and found quite a large number of profoundly racist officers. All Lebs are criminals, all blacks are lazy and useless, etc.
I watched the news with one cop, there was a city councillor talking about corruption. The cop said, “bah, you bastards are all in on it anyway.”
“What? Not all politicians are corrupt.”
“Not because he’s a politician, because he’s Asian. Triads!”
“His surname is Nguyen.”
“So?”
“That’s Vietnamese. Triads are Chinese.”
“Same thing.”
“Um, don’t they teach you something like this in the police academy? Triads, Chinese, mafia, Italian, mob, Irish?”
“No. Why?”
That was a senior constable.
One probationary constable was having an affair with her senior sergeant, who was married. He was having substance abuse problems – he abused speed. While under investigation, though given desk work (as most senior sergeants are) he was still issued and permitted to handle firearms. Would a civilian speed addict be permitted to keep firearms?
On one occasion, due to mechanical problems there was only one instead of the usual two patrol cars operating in one district in the city. The police driving it left the district and went through another and into a third so one of the constables could pick up his girlfriend and drop her off at a nightclub. Had they been needed in their home district, they would have taken 45 minutes to reach there.
Known felons were harassed by patrolling police with the deliberate intent of driving them into the next police district, so the cops there would have to deal with them instead. “Criminal tennis”, they called it.
Petty criminals were encouraged to confess to crimes they’d not committed (or which couldn’t be proven) in exchange for lesser sentences, so as to improve conviction rates for the district.
None of these things are illegal (except perhaps the last, but it’d be hard to prove). But they don’t make the police force look good. Now, me telling you – you’ve no reason to believe me. I’m just some guy online. But if I’m an anonymous police officer telling you, well…
And the people involved would be very embarrassed. Which really is what this is all about. It’s very common for large organisations to have rules about “confidentiality” which really are designed to stop them being embarrassed by everyone knowing about the wrong things they’ve done.
“if he was aware of illegal actions by fellow police, wouldn’t setting up a blog about it be one of the last resorts if your primary concern was getting the problem fixed quickly?”
Nice theory. In practice, in large organisations – government or corporate – complaints about misconduct or illegal actions by your colleagues are suppressed, delayed, diverted, and your career is ruined for nothing. Whereas if something becomes public, action is very quick.
For example, the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by US Army military police were reported by several junior soldiers. A couple even requested a transfer, giving the reason on their requests in writing that there were abuses. But nothing was done. “There’s no evidence”, said the superiors. So one guy took pictures, which the abusers were happy to pose for. “We’ll look into it,” said the superiors. Nothing happened. Six months later when the solder got out, he released the pictures to the media. Now a proper investigation began, and there were charges laid and so on.
So even when there are outright criminal things happening within them, large organisations do little or nothing. Publicity’s needed to get them moving.
If this anonymous blogger can’t keep his anonymity, then how can journalists’ sources, or police informers on criminals?