An unknown number of private citizens who were councillors and officials at a local authority, South Tyneside, have brought a private action "and filed a complaint in the Superior Court of California in the San Mateo County against “persons unknown”".
Why has South Tyneside County Council spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of council taxpayers money on the private pursuit of outing Mr Monkey? As you can see, he has not posted on his blog since 2009. But, they are not pursuing Mr Monkey for his blog anymore instead they are seeking to unmask Mr Monkey via a Twitter account.
Mark Stephens, a leading media lawyer who has represented WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange after the US government sought to obtain his Twitter account details, said: “I think it is inappropriate for a local authority to spend money on this kind of exercise. Local authorities cannot sue for libel and, if individual councillors have been defamed, they should take proceedings at their own cost.”
UPDATE:
According to the BBC...
South Tyneside Council takes Twitter to court in US
The authorities can't send us all to jail for merely telling the truth or expressing an opinion.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I discover the details of an injunction I re-post the links irrespective of the consequences.