MPs tell Google to block privacy-breaking searches
The committee looking into injunctions says search engines much take a stronger role in ensuring privacy law isn’t broken online.
A cross party committee of MPs have called out Google for enabling injunctions to be broken and not implementing the possible technologies to prevent repeat cases of the same breach.
A report from the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions released today slammed the search engine and said it was willing to pursue legislation to force the company to take action.
The committee began to look at the role of injunctions and the part online firms could play in July 2011, following Ryan Giggs taking out an injunction to stop Imogen Thomas from selling her story about their affair to the newspapers.
The print press complained they had to uphold "judge-made law" by not publishing the story, whilst many were breaking the ruling on websites like Twitter and even in the House of Commons under parliamentary privilege, neither with consequences.
"If injunctions are to provide adequate protection, it is essential that there are no avoidable barriers to their enforcement," read the report from the committee.
"The Giggs case, and other cases, demonstrate that steps should be taken to limit the capacity for online breaches."
Social network sympathy
The committee claimed the likes of Twitter removed the "gatekeeper" role from publishers and allowed everyone to voice their opinions and have their own take on privacy. Although the benefits of this could be seen in the likes of the Arab Spring, the negatives were seen in the direct flouting of UK law.
However, it stated both Twitter and Facebook were willing to give the identity of users breaking the law to UK officials, if presented with a valid court order.
"The internet is not, therefore, ungoverned by the law, or without enforcement options," it added.
The report called on the Attorney General to use his powers more to go after those flouting injunctions online, but going through the civil courts instead.
"We believe the Attorney General should be more willing to exercise his power as Guardian of the Public Interest to bring actions for civil contempt of court in respect of breaches of injunctions online," it read.
"The threshold for him intervening should be lower [as] such action would provide a strong deterrent against future such breaches."
The Total Economic Impact™ Of Turbonomic Application Resource Management for IBM Cloud® Paks
Business benefits and cost savings enabled by IBM Turbonomic Application Resource Management
Free DownloadThe Total Economic Impact™ of IBM Watson Assistant
Cost savings and business benefits enabled by Watson Assistant
Free DownloadThe field guide to application modernisation
Moving forward with your enterprise application portfolio
Free DownloadAI for customer service
Discover the industry-leading AI platform that customers and employees want to use
Free Download
