Only those media organisations which have already expressed an interest in a story need to be notified of a privacy-protecting court injunction, the High Court has said. Notification does not have to go to every media organisation in the country.
The High Court ruled in the case of an un-named person whose laptop was stolen in a burglary and who sought the Court’s protection for the private information and photographs that were on the computer.
The Court said that it was clear that whoever had the computer had no right to view, store or disseminate the information and photographs on the machine, and that the burglary victim’s rights to privacy outweighed any rights to freedom of expression enjoyed by the burglar or anyone else in possession of the computer.
The Court also said that if the person who has the computer tries to interest newspapers in the publication of it, lawyers for the burglary victim are under no obligation to tell every media organisation of the Court’s order that the information should not be published. The lawyers only had to tell any organisation with an interest in the story, the Court said.
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