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Hunt to meet justice secretary Clarke to discuss super injuctions and Twitter

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

May 11, 2011 | 3 min read

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has pledged to investigate how to improve privacy laws following the number of super injunctions being broken online without the ability to punish.

Following the number of super injunctions taken out in recent times by high profile figures to prevent the media reporting certain stories, their identities have been revealed through Twitter. The sheer volume of people passing on the information however has made it problematic for any prosecution to take place, with Hunt claiming that the internet is ‘making a mockery’ of privacy laws.

Hunt described the situation as ‘crazy’ in that these injunctions prevented newspapers publishing information which was widely available through popular social networking sites and follows one account being set up on Twitter aiming to directly break the injunctions.

According to The Guardian, Hunt has said that he plans to meet with justice secretary Kenneth Clarke to discuss what can be done.

We are in this crazy situation where information is available freely online which you are not able to print in newspapers,” said Hunt.

"Technology, and Twitter in particular, is making a mockery of the privacy laws that we have and we do need to think about the regulatory environment that we have.

"Whatever the law tries to do on privacy, the internet is a very powerful force that you can't buck so we do need to look at it.

"We need to get into a situation where regulation and legislation is up to speed with changes in technology and that we get the balance right between the rights of an individual and the rights we all cherish for freedom of expression."

Yesterday, former motorsport boss Max Mosley failed with his attempt to persuade the European Court of Justice to rule that the media should inform people when a story is about to run about them, which is thought would have led to many more super injunctions being imposed had he won.

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