Remember the ‘outing’ by the Times of thitherto anonymous blogger Nightjack?

It turns out the Times journalist concerned sneaked into Nightjack’s email account by a simple ruse to discover his real identity, and subsequently the Times lied to the courts about the way it found its information.

The whole dismal business is now spelled out in great and careful detail by legal writer David Allen Green (aka Jack of Kent) who also has done sterling service to the cause of honest journalism in exposing the lies of Johann Hari. The issue has ended up as one of many examples of media abuses being looked at by Lord Justice Leveson.

Thus:

That was it; there was little more that needed to be said. It was, as lawyers would say, as plain as a pikestaff that the High Court had, in effect, been misled by the Times, just as it was now clear that the Times had outed the NightJack blogger though senior managers were aware at the time that his identity had been established using an unlawful email hack and that this was a seeming breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

A person’s privacy was invaded; a criminal offence appeared to have been committed; the High Court had been effectively misled; senior managers had pointed out the legal significance of all this in contemporaneous emails; and the person’s anonymity was to be irretrievably destroyed. But the editor of the Times published the story anyway.

Now Richard Horton (Nightjack) is suing the Times. This Guardian report coyly notes without more that the former Times journalist who ‘hacked’ into Nightjack’s email account went on to work for the Guardian and Daily Telegraph too.

Let justice be done.

The curious thing here is that the ‘outing’ of Nightjack in itself would have been quite lawful if improper or arguably unlawful means had not been used to achieve it.

Underlying the case is the not straightforward issue of what sort of violation of privacy is ‘bad’. For example:

  • I leave my file of personal papers on the bus and someone picks them and uses that information against me (after returning to me the file)
  • I leave my file of personal papers lying on my own front lawn. Someone sees them over the fence and walks into the garden to read them
  • I am known to leave my house front door wide open when I go out. Someone sees the open door and walks into the house, then reads my personal papers sitting on the desk
  • I take my personal papers to work and leave them on my desk. My boss reads them.
  • I set up an email account but choose a banal and obvious password – some people guess it and read my work
  • I buy a mobile phone and against the advice in the manual set no password. Someone finds my phone and reads my text messages

How egregious are these different ‘invasions of privacy’? How far is there some responsibility on the owner of data to guard it fairly carefully?

And does it all matter anyway when microdrones with tiny cameras soon will be hovering outside our upstairs windows, watching our every move?