In the age of the net, this isn’t the way to respond to a blackmailer, warns linton chiswick |
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Despite the best attempts of a British judge to keep the man’s identity out of the public sphere, the name of the ‘minor royal’ at the centre of an attempted sex-and-drugs blackmail scandal has replicated at breakneck speed across the internet.
Two things are now clear: if he hasn’t made a public statement by the time you’re reading this, he’ll very soon have to; and – in these days of instant and international media – a traditional response to blackmail just won’t wash. It may, in fact, do more harm than good.
The issue of a gagging order is standard procedure in blackmail cases and relates more to the nature of the crime than the celebrity status of the victim. If publicity is the very threat, any outcome that involves publicity inevitably compromises the victim. The problem is that, viewed from this side of |
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The name of the royal at the centre of the sex and drugs scandal has spread across the internet
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an international information revolution, an old-fashioned gagging order of the kind issued by the judge looks about as secure as a fistful of salt.
Twenty years after the British Government’s failed attempts to halt the Australian publication of Spycatcher, former spy Peter Wright's MI5 expose, the flow of information in and out of the country no longer involves books and airports.
After a British commentator inadvertently named the royal blackmail victim during a live interview on Fox News on Sunday, Australian newspapers published the name on the internet. They were quickly followed by newspapers in New Zealand and Canada. Within minutes of the leak, the man's identity was easily accessible by anybody with a computer; by anybody, in fact, with a mobile phone web browser. As of writing, a Google news search reveals a choice of 750 news stories naming the man.
What makes international secrecy impossible is that while information is a global currency, the high court's jurisdiction is  |
A right royal to-do about nothing?
