Online Anonymity

Given the ongoing civil unrest across the UK, we are worried that the new government is about to clamp down harder and faster on our free expression than we might have first thought. Specifically, over the weekend there has been a railing against online anonymity, something that Ben Sixsmith covers in a piece for the Critic. A hastily rolled-out ban on anonymity could be a dragnet that stifles entirely lawful and benign speech and ensnares innocent people. Regular listeners and viewers will already be familiar with the Education Secretary’s move to halt the commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. We said that we would be taking action and, as reported in the Telegraph, the FSU has now sent a pre-action protocol letter to the Education Secretary, threatening a judicial review if she doesn’t reverse her decision. We have also this week been prompted to write to a local council to threaten Judicial Review of a PSPO (Public Spaces Protection Order). The PSPO passed by Thanet District Council means people within the area covered can now be fined or even face a criminal conviction for “causing a disturbance to others” or being “pejorative” in public, among other things. It effectively imposes a strict liability speech offence, with none of the safeguards which Parliament and the courts have deemed necessary when restricting people’s fundamental rights and liberties. We end today with news of a positive outcome for the sociologist Laura Favaro, who claimed that she had been denied access to her own research data after she wrote an article for Times Higher Education about how female scholars feared career damage if they criticised the idea that transgender women should be considered the same as people who are born female in all aspects of public life. We also briefly mention Almut Gadow’s case, the background to which is laid out on her crowdjustice page. Now that the government has sabotaged the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, Almut’s case has become even more important in our battle to recover academic free expression. ‘That's Debatable!’  is edited by Jason Clift.