Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Baby P, anonymity and the internet

Martin Belam writes about the difficulty of keeping information out of the public domain in the internet age. The identities of Baby P and those convicted of harming him are projected by legal injunctions, but their names are not hard to find with a little Googling.

He concludes:
It is difficult to see how much longer the court ruling can be expected to hold. If the anonymity restriction is lifted, it will at least remove the curious moral anomaly that people who worked on the case are free to be named, shamed and hounded by the press, whereas the actual perpetrators of the dreadful crime are protected by the state from the prying public.
It will also allow the child the dignity of being remembered under his full name.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Indeed it's an utterly pointless law in this day and age. Once information is out in the open, it's out in the open. They might as well pass a law telling the tide not to come in.