Super-injuctions, without the super, please...

Ryan Giggs needs to learn to keep his penis in his pants.  The prime minister thinks they are unsustainable (The Telegraph, Monday), and if you do not want people to find out about something, shut up about it.  Three easy ways to avoid the need for super-injunctions, and also to maintain your privacy.  You may think that would be enough to neutralise any need for this legal tool, but we are not even half way there. 

            Piers Morgan is a loathsome person.  Throughout his editorship of The News of the World and the Daily Mirror, he focussed on ‘exposing’ a variety of stories about a variety of people.  No one in public life was safe – Diana, Princess of Wales (meh) amongst others, was the subject of many stories.  His attitude to privacy has upset countless people, including Ian Hislop and Jeremy Clarkson, with whom few have manage to remain upset for any length of time.  I did not have an opinion on Piers Morgan, or indeed super-injunctions, until I heard Piers Morgan’s edition on the Desert Island Discs Archive.  Openly he states that he cares not for anyone’s privacy, however I defend my own and others’.  So, you might think I would argue in favour of super-injunctions.  But I do not.  Not even where it would clip the wings of people like Piers Morgan.

            In order to have an opinion on this subject, it is perhaps objective to work out what would happen in either case.  First, we have the situation in which super-injunctions do not exist, much like now—albeit in a world in which the idea has been tried.  Events of all sorts are open to publication, and provided they are true, they are not met with prosecutions under the law of Libel.  A story being true does not make it public knowledge, not does it give the right to the gutter press to use it to behave cynically, or to sell newspapers.  If they do, arguably it says more about them than it does about the person, people, or events of which they write. 

Second, we have a situation in which they are used.  Much like now, we would not be able to know what has been suppressed or by whom, except where thousands of Twitter users, myself included (@SamuelFurse, Monday), participate in ‘outing’ it.  We were protected by the fact that Twitter is based in America and the fact that even with our efficient law system, 30k people are not going to be traced, arrested charged and sentenced.  Of course a number of super-injunctions could have been taken out without us knowing – that is after all the point.  Meetings, agreements, bribes, payments, swaps, deaths or even criminal activity might be covered up or publication of which is conveniently avoided by super-injunctions. We just do not know. 

You might also argue that secret information can and should be protected, and that super-injunctions are a way of doing this.  Maybe if the law had been brought in a century ago, you might have been right.  However we have the Official Secrets Act (first in 1911), covers information relating to national security.  Important stuff, like government secrets and who works for secret government agencies and so on, is protected.  Not some oaf who happens to be banging Whoeversheis Jones. 

And that is really the problem.  There are situations in which super-injunctions could be handy, although we have other means for controlling really sensitive information, but there are also times when it manifestly is not justified.  Personal indiscretions cannot be a justification for the use of serious legal tools.  This reminds me of the death penalty: of course there are times in which it is easy to believe that some criminals should just be dealt with – serial rapist-murderers would be pretty high on my list.  But where does it stop?  And what happens if it is wrong?  It cannot be undone.  Super-injunctions are not in such a dramatic position just yet, but use of them over time would undoubtedly give opportunity for greater breadth of cases, some of which would inevitably provide ammunition from anti-super-injunction arguers.  Thus if a super-injunction was granted and it later emerged that it concealed criminal activity or something which really ought to have been brought to light, what then?

Super-injunctions are too powerful.  We, as other democratic nations, have demonstrated that a balance is what underpins a stable democracy.  Thus we have a judiciary, Monarchy, parliament and police force, all of whom are independent.  Naturally things might be faster if we did not, but then we need checks and balances to ensure we achieve an understanding of the truth.  While who is shagging whom falls under the auspices of truth, I am not interested.  Not unless it turns out to be comically ridiculous, like a passionate love affair between Nicholas Parsons and Margaret Thatcher.  But the chances are remote (or are they?) and we have no evidence to support the idea of Him giving her Just a minute without hesitation, repetition or deviation.  Either way, newspapers will print whatever they want.  If it is untrue they will write it as a ‘balanced’ piece, or they will get sued into the pre-loincloth age.  And if people buy their newspaper they will carry on doing it. 

So although I would like to have super-injunctions to avoid the tabloids reporting irrelevant dross which I do not read anyway, they serve no purpose.  Not if it is really important.