PowerSwitch

Tonight the BBC has been banned, by an injunction obtained by the Attorney General,
from reporting the current developments in the "Cash for Honours" scandal.

All they could say was that the affair is a matter of legitimate public interest.

So how many reading this are willing tamely to wave goodbye to free speech in Britain ?

Just what does such govt. conduct portend for a future under PO+GW pressures ?

Regards,

Bill

Billhook wrote:So how many reading this are willing tamely to wave goodbye to free speech in Britain ?

Injunctions during criminal investigations (is this a criminal investigation?) are quite common - in fact I'm more surprised there haven't been injunctions already.

So how many times has Blair's regime used injunctions against the BBC reporting on Govt conduct in the past ?

I can't recall any, nor could the BBC's politics correspondent,
who rightly (IMV) alluded to the importance of the precedent being set tonight.

Regards,

Bill

If there's a precedent surely it's the nature of the investigation rather than the first use of injunctions?

It is indeed a criminal investigation, and it follows that against the govt of Lloyd George,

but the precedent, and the coup attempt I suggest it is,

is against the right of the public to have media reporting of govt corruption,

and thus against democratic government itself.

This is of course an entirely distinct issue from the trad use of D-notice censorship of info affecting national security.

Regards,

Bill

The Attorney General now seems to have failed in his attempt to silence the Beeb.

It is perhaps unfortunate that, since his ruling that the Iraq war was legal, his opinions are treated with with cynicism and contempt.

I'll be more concerned when the injunction includes not discussing the fact that an injunction has been granted. At least at the moment they can say, "hey, we're not allowed to tell you about this."

Tess wrote:I'll be more concerned when the injunction includes not discussing the fact that an injunction has been granted. At least at the moment they can say, "hey, we're not allowed to tell you about this."

"D Notices" work like that I believe.

See: http://www.dnotice.org.uk/
and http://www.answers.com/topic/d-notice


Take a look too at the The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill, 2000

The police etc under this Act can seize your computer files etc ... and you are NOT allowed to reveal anything about this to anyone, under threat of jail.

I think that this suggests that if you are regularly chatting to someone using PGP encryption or similar and then you are made to handover the encryption keys, you must CONTINUE to chat away in the future because stopping would indicate to the other person that you had been compromised!

See:
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/ ... Powers_Act
http://www.stand.org.uk/ripnotes/
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/ ... t_Part_III