A pseudonymous fellow blogger (PFB) and I have had an exchange re privacy and the Night Jack story:

CC:   Do you really think that if you get up in public as a blogger does and start banging on, you also have the right to get an injunction based on ‘privacy’ to stop someone calling out "Come off it [name]!" That was what Night Jack wanted, and rightly the Judge said No.

PFB:   I’m a fierce defender of privacy as a basic civil liberty and assuming that someone hasn’t broken their contract or committed libel, I think privacy should reign supreme.  In the case of Nightjack, his employers should be informed of his identity as he clearly broke his contract but the newspapers should never have been allowed to publish it.

What would a world run by Privacy Supremacy look like?

Nothing in the media about Profumo, Clinton and Monica, Berlusconi and how their sexy antics might or might not reflect on their judgement. Private business, even if they are at it in their own offices paid for by the taxpayer?

Scope for scrutinising MPs’ and MEPs’ expenses receipts far reduced. They have their privacy rights.

A top CEO is seen blowing millions in a drunken casino romp. Nothing his shareholders can know about that sign of weak judgement. Privacy.

I want to write my life story and mention my affairs with glamorous actresses (and actors) which were all obvious enough to casual observers at the time. No can do. Their right to privacy trumps mine.

The point is that people do things. Other people talk and write about people doing things. It’s called human life.

The law in the UK defaults towards openness and against covering up dishonesty (see eg the fall of Lord Browne).

This leads to various negative consequences in lots of cases (innuendo, death by media circus, personal destruction).

But defaulting towards ‘privacy’ will not stop all those excesses. And will create new ones.

As Bowen LJ famously opined in a case over a century ago:

The state of a man’s mind is as much a fact as the state of his digestion

Hypocrisy, callousness, selfishness, greed and incompetence are all far more likely to stay unexposed if ‘privacy’ is taken too far. It surely is in part the knowledge that someone some day may write publicly about one’s poor behaviour which helps keep things broadly in order? Crude. But effective?

Is not the best plan for a chronic liar to blog anonymously to sneer at honesty? To help create a climate in which odious behaviour is more acceptable? A right worth protecting?

That’s my view anyway. Anyone interested can try to check the credibility/integrity of my saying so against my own record over many years.

Because you know who I am.