By Sophie Khan / @khan_sophie

Last week it was revealed by James Harding, The Times editor, during questioning at the Leveson inquiry, which is investigating the ethics and standards of the press, that Patrick Foster, an ex-Times journalist, had hacked into the personal account of DC Richard Horton, the author of an anonymous police blog, NightJack. An interim injunction had been granted to the author of the blog on 28 May 2009, but was overturned on the 16 June 2009 by Mr Justice Eady who held that “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”, and that the author of the blog had no “reasonable expectation of privacy”. But, I feel that if the judge had known at the time that it was through hacking and not as The Times had claimed “by the process of deduction and detective work, mainly using information on the internet” that The Times may have struggled to lift the cloak of anonymity and that NightJack may still have been blogging today.

The Orwell prize-winning blog was not just seen as a commentary on frontline policing but as a vital ‘source’ of information to the public. Many of his blogs highlighted issues that were in the public interest and needed to be debated. That theme has continued in numerous anonymous police blogs and tweets and was the subject of a tweet by PC Nick Manning, who revealed that in October of last year there were only three police officers available to cover a large area of north Dorset. Although he used his own identity and as a result has been subjected to disciplinary proceedings by his police force, the public had a right to know this information and it is important that the public interest test is preserved.

One way of preserving the test would be to recognise the right of anonymity as a human right, especially in the current climate of protests where many would be hindered from exercising their freedom of expression if exposed. The ideology behind NightJack and now mostly anonymous police tweeters is pushing the boundaries of freedom of expression into an arena that is unknown and has readily been challenged by protestors.

So I find it ironic that police officers have taken a lead in promoting the concept of anonymity and are reluctant to give up their right, when they are the first ones to ‘unmask the anonymous’ and lobby the government for more powers to deny others the same right.

Originally posted on Solicitors Journal