A Twitter account has been set up to unmask celebrities holding super-injunctions.
Injunctions are essentially gagging orders granted by the courts to prevent news outlets from running stories about celebrities' private (and usually scandalous) lives; a super-injunction prevents them from even revealing the fact that an injunction has been taken out.
Newspapers, websites and other media outlets are bound by law not to break a super-injunction lest they face a hefty fine and other tiresome legal shenanigans.
A little bird told me…
But tweets are proving to be another matter and the recently-born account appears to have broken a number of injunctions relating to celebrities.
It's not clear if any or all of the tweets are entirely accurate – Jemima Khan who is one of the celebrities named in the tweets, for instance, has taken to Twitter to say that, "Rumour that I have a super injunction preventing publication of "intimate" photos of me and Jeremy Clarkson. NOT TRUE!"
No matter how little we care whether Jemima Khan hooked up with Jeremy Clarkson the case of the supposed super-injunction-busting Twitter account highlights the fact that digital and social media may be making such legal tools obsolete.
Twitter doesn't sound keen for it or its users to be bound by legal gagging orders if their statement to The Guardian is anything to go by:
"There are tweets that we do remove, such as illegal tweets and spam. However, we make efforts to keep these exceptions narrow so they may serve to prove a broader and more important rule – we strive not to remove tweets on the basis of their content."
