Following on from my post earlier this week about a worrying legal issue where animal rights protestors were due in court on contempt charges for refusing to hand over full details of their email mailing list to Oxford University, I have looked into it further and – as ever – things are more complex than they appear.
My very serious concern was that the High Court had ordered a mailing list handed over. It strikes me that a UK citizen has the right to have their identity protected if they sign up to a mailing list. It is especially important over a difficult subject such as animal rights where there are very strong feelings and accusations of illegal activity.
You cannot know someone’s motives in signing up for a mailing list, but you can see the risk it may pose. For example, what if the mailing list brings up a series of Oxford University email addresses? It is all too easy to see what the university may think of that. But what if the individual was signing up purely out of interest or in order to find out when protests were planned so they could make sure they weren’t in the area at the time?
But Oxford University graciously sent me a copy of the order that I haven’t been able to find, and the legal situation is complicated by Speak’s own actions.
The story so far…
This is the situation and a quick bit of background:
Oxford University is building an animal lab in the heart of town. This has been heavily opposed by animal rights protestors. A protest a few years’ earlier had forced the University of Cambridge into abandoning their plans to build a similar lab, so the stakes were very high.
Animal rights protestors – under the banner “Speak” – sensed a sea-change. But at the same time, the University and, to a large degree, the government were determined not to make the UK a no-go zone for important (and profitable) research on animals.
Speak had an early success when they harassed the building company, its staff, directors and anyone associated with it to such an extent that it decided to abandon the project. Things got serious and the University with the full (but quiet) backing of the authorities, put in place a whole series of measures to protect the identity of another building firm – and then sought to find a company that would take the risk.
It eventually found one and the University has been absolutely relentless in its protection of the firm. Workers wear balaclavas and no insignia. A private firm of security experts – ex-special forces if reports are to be believed (personally I believe they are ex-special branch) – keep tabs on the protestors with counter-surveillance. A heavy police presence appears whenever there is an organised march. And so on and so forth.
The most significant fighting though has been in the law courts. Oxford University has hired a specialist firm and a top QC to get all the legal protections it can and hem in the protestors. It has been very effective. The protestors have consistently breached orders, sometimes without really being aware of it, and the clamp has been slowly tightened, much to Speak’s fury.
The High Court has, however, been largely fair and given Speak the right to protest despite increasing public irritation. However, many Speak organisers believe passionately enough about what they see as a just cause that they are fully prepared to break the law if they believe it is necessary. The result has been that Speak’s leader, Mel Broughton, is effectively unable to enter Oxford because of exclusion orders.
The crux of it
That’s the background. What’s happened recently is that in the early part of last year, Oxford University managed to get an injunction against Speak and various others that banned them from naming the construction company doing the work on the lab.
Despite all the measures introduced by the University, Speak eventually found out who the company was and then broke the injunction against it by naming the company publicly on its website *and* – and this is the point – naming them in an email sent out to all 700 mailing list subscribers.
The name of the company was swiftly pulled off the website – presumably after some heavyweight phonecalls – but there was still the issue of those on the list. So the University asked the Court to make a judgment about whether Speak should disclose whom they sent this information to.
Naturally the judge – not exactly over the moon that his order had been breached so flagrantly – decided in the University’s favour and ordered Speak to name who ran its website, who had access to it and who was on the mailing list. (Incidentally, in my previous post I theorised that the order was secret. In fact, it is not, and it was largely a misunderstanding of the legal meaning of the word “seal”. I have grown too used to the US legal system thanks to my Sex.com book where things are kept “under seal” i.e. secret, where in the UK an order is “sealed” when it is officially stamped by the court and comes into effect.)
Anyway, Speak has, naturally, refused to hand over any details about website contributors or owners, and refused to disclose the mailing list. And so Broughton and another organiser, Robert Cogswell, will be up in court for contempt on Monday, 29 Jan.
So where do you stand?
So while I remain opposed to the idea of a mailing list being handed over, it is easy to see the legal justification, especially when mailing lists hold no particular legal protections.
If Broughton etc are found guilty of contempt, does this set a difficult legal precedent? Not necessarily. If found guilty they will have broken a series of injunctive orders – most plainly naming the company on their site – so the mailing list aspect of it will not be given specific reference. Unless the judge decides to focus on it, which I suspect he won’t.
Also the mailing list order only came when there was already an injunction in place and it was knowingly and wilfully broken. So it will very difficult to see how this situation could be extended to occasions where a company claims it has been libelled (or whatever) on a mailing list and so it should be given the full list’s email addresses.
I still don’t like it though. The judge should give some protection to what are innocent parties. They only received emails and did not elicit or encourage any law to be broken. When it is quite clear that having those email addresses made available to the University could have a detrimental impact on individuals, the judge should think of their rights over the university’s.
As it is, I find it very unlikely that Broughton will hand the list over. To his mind, going to jail will make him a martyr for the cause – especially when he has been effectively emasculated through the exclusion orders.
Nevertheless I may start asking some lawyers about case law surrounding mailing lists.
theOlster
January 25, 2007 at 5:35 pmThis is a REALLY hard one to call.
On the one hand if I signed up to a mailing list I would expect my details to remain confidential, I have rights.
However, the website organisers so blatantly ignored the orders of the courts. To do nothing would be saying what they did was OK.
I suppose the real question is what do the courts expect to gain by knowing who this information was sent to. If my details were on there, could I expect a phone call, someone knocking on my door? Would my details be published? That doesn’t exactly achieve anything, and certainly wouldn’t be a from of punishment for anyone other than the mail recipients!
Keithpeter
January 25, 2007 at 9:21 pmIf just one of the 700 recipients is outside the UK, what is to stop them publishing the name of the company on a Web site outside the UK?
Aren’t injunctions a little like trying to dam the ocean these days?
Kieren
January 25, 2007 at 9:34 pm> what is to stop them publishing the name of the company on a Web site outside the UK?
Nothing at all. I think it’s fair to say that the Speak campaign has been pretty short-sighted and bad-tempered throughout.
If the intention was simply to get the name of the building company in the public arena, there are very much better ways. And the fact is that the name is out there if you are inclined to look for it. But the fact is that it is only a very small group of people that feel particularly strongly about the situation for the name of the company to be an issue.
The vast majority, even if they oppose animal testing and the lab, would view the builders as simply builders doing a job. The discovery of who the firm was caused such parochial delight that Speak was apparently unable to think through its actions and named it without considering the consequences.
It was foolhardy behaviour but even so I don’t see why those that have signed up for an email update mailing list should be dragged into the argument.
Kieren
Kieren
January 25, 2007 at 9:36 pmI should also state, I suppose, that I am *not* on the mailing list, so I have no ulterior motive or conflict of interests.
Kieren
David
January 30, 2007 at 2:32 pmI’m not at all convinced that the company they named are necessarily the current contractors.
All the documentation put up on the SPEAK website referred to a company that was contracted to manage waste disposal at the site in 2003. That was before the building work was halted because of activist harassment of the original construction company.
As you say, SPEAK could easily have spread the word surreptitiously amongst AR and welfare groups without getting into any trouble. That means they were either being totally stupid thinking or did it intentionally seeking ‘martyrdom’ status for Mel B and Rob C.
I also think you may have a point in suggesting that the University is asking over and above what it wants with regard to the e-mail list.
Having to hand over the e-mail list seems a bit over the top, even though SPEAK were obviously quite flagrant in their flouting of the injunction. However, were I an activist and wanted to sign up on the SPEAK e-mail-list, I’d use an anonymous address that wouldn’t be easy to track down. Anyone using an Oxford University address to register would be being slightly silly.
Kieren
January 30, 2007 at 4:34 pmI’m not sure they have the right people either. But then I don’t think the builders should be dragged into the argument anyway.
I think the University is being too zealous when it asks for the mailing list. I can see the temptation but it should know better. Unforunately without Speak giving a strong enough legal argument back, the freedom of speech aspect was not promoted strongly enough.
And yes, you would have to be daft to sign up to the Speak list with an Ox Uni email address but then I look at it the other way. If someone at the University wants to find out what Speak is saying, they should feel entirely comfortable with signing up on their news alert service.
Fear breeds fear. And the best way to confront suspicion and fear is to refuse to play by its rules and be open and fearless.
I note by the way that Broughton and Cogswell are now referring to themselves as the “Speak Two”. Which I think is a bit cheap considering what the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six actually went through.
Anyway, Speak have stuck up a more in-depth rundown of what’s happened before. The case was heard yesterday and will continue tomorrow.
Kieren
Kieren
January 30, 2007 at 4:46 pmI don’t mean tomorrow – I mean it will continue Thursday 1 Feb.
Kieren
David
January 30, 2007 at 4:48 pm“Fear breeds fear. And the best way to confront suspicion and fear is to refuse to play by its rules and be open and fearless.”
Well put, I agree with that wholeheartedly.
The case was adjourned yesterday until Thursday 1st Feb, I thought.
David
February 1, 2007 at 11:46 amIt has just occurred to me that the High Court mayn’t order the e-mail list to be handed over in court today.
The list was only required by the University at that particular time (by 4pm on Saturday 21st October), so that it could send out an e-mail itself to explain to those on the list why SPEAK were wrong in their e-mail alert of 16th October.
The question is whether the University still wants to contact those on the list three months later.
David
February 2, 2007 at 4:19 pmWell in the end, the SPEAK protagonists were acquitted over a technicality. Luckily the two defendents passed control of the list to a third party abroad, so were not in a position to hand it over anyway.
Kieren
February 2, 2007 at 5:31 pmHey David,
Yes I noticed. The Guardian has done a piece about it.
I wonder when the judge will make his decision. Possibly Monday. I don’t know. Oxford Uni’s lawyer in the case are a very unfriendly bunch. And I’m not in the mood to speak to Speak.
Frankly I think a potentially nasty precedent has been avoided here. I find it a little worrying that this email list thing was entered into so quickly.
Nothing on Speak’s site as yet.
Kieren
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