2011 British privacy injunctions controversy

The British privacy injunctions controversy began in early 2011, when London-based tabloid newspapers published stories about anonymous celebrities that were intended to flout what are commonly (but not formally) known in English law as super-injunctions, where the claimant could not be named, and carefully omitting details that could not legally be published. In April and May 2011, users of non-UK hosted websites, including the social media website Twitter, began posting material connecting various British celebrities with injunctions relating to a variety of potentially scandalous activities. Details of the alleged activities by those who had taken out the gagging orders were also published in the foreign press, as well as in Scotland, where the injunctions had no legal force.

In England and Wales, as in many other places, an injunction can be used as a gag order, in which certain details of a legal case, including identities or actions, may not be published. These were originally created to protect people whose lives might be at risk if their details were made public, such as child offenders. However, with the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998, which wrote the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, judges began to use a passage of the Act to extend the powers of these legal rights to cover the right to privacy. An injunction whose existence and details may not be published, in addition to the facts or allegations injuncted, became informally known as a "super-injunction".

The controversy has led to a number of wider issues being publicly examined including freedom of the press, freedom of speech, online censorship, the effect of European treaties on the UK legal systems and fundamental constitutional issues regarding parliamentary privilege and the relation between the judiciary and parliament.

The Guardian and Trafigura super-injunction

The first major publicised event involving the use of injunctions to prevent reporting in the UK was in October 2009, when The Guardian newspaper reported that it had been prevented by a legal injunction applied for by London libel lawyers Carter Ruck from covering remarks made in Parliament. Other sources, including The Spectator and the blogger Guido Fawkes, then speculated that it related to previous reports The Guardian had printed regarding the oil company Trafigura and their alleged waste dumping in the Ivory Coast.