Never mind sealed sessions - try secret trials. There was a trial in the U.K. a little over a decade ago over whether a certain media mogul was engaging in cartel behaviour - and apart from those parties directly involved in the trial, and a few others such as myself who have come to know about the matter through one of the parties involved, nobody even knows it happened. It was deemed to be in the public interest to…
Getting something sealed in the UK courts is a surefire way to get it on the front page of the Irish papers the next day. Keeping secrets by decree is very difficult these days.
How is this even allowed? Should the judge and overseeing team be punished?
Yeah it blows my mind that the judge has the ability to do this. As the article says he is basically sealing stuff on the basis that Google said it could be "clickbait" if it was in the media.
It's early days yet but this is so far shaping up to be the weakest anti-trust trial yet - weaker than Microsoft and many prior trials, because of Judge Mehta.
Fuck this guy. Amit Mehta exemplifies the problem with the system, and the failure of the American government. He is a disgrace to his position.
The only reason courthouses are public is so the public can satisfy themselves that the courts are doing their job in a fair way.
That is equally satisfied by having the court proceedings sealed for a given time, for example 5 years. By then, the information is nearly worthless to a competitor.
How is this even allowed? Should the judge and overseeing team be punished?
Because it could harm competition if they don't. No ?
A) In the article they mention Google's lawyers said making things public would only serve more "clickbait" to embarrass the company... so their problem is people would talk about how Google execs actively flaunted anti-trust rules
The only reason courthouses are public is so the public can satisfy themselves that the courts are doing their job in a fair way. That is equally satisfied by having the court proceedings sealed for a given time , for example 5 years. By then, the information is nearly worthless to a competitor.
"Indeed, Google lawyers have explicitly argued that the judge should avoid allowing documents to become public solely because it is “clickbait.” To put it differently, the search giant literally argues material should stay sealed merely because if that material is interesting. "
There's nothing about industry secrets. Google's lawyers don't want to "embarrass" the company or its execs.
Not OP, but I assume if he's in the UK, you take it for granted that all communications are monitored and big brother is everywhere. Ergo naming and shaming here runs the risk of the ire of those protecting said mogul... This is how democracy dies in the darkness
I remember throughout my years that London had a (negatively) impressive amount of cameras ( https://www.precisesecurity.com/articles/top-10-countries-by... ) I don't know how it started, but their own "war on terror" must have helped to hit that top spot. Monitoring internet is just the same. "Eyes everywhere". The technology changed (people walking on the street vs people browsing the internet), but the practice re…
The US actually had more per capita (world rankings are US, China, UK, Germany), though they may be more _visible_ in the UK (particularly after the GDPR, there are differences in rules on covert surveillance). As I understand it, they're nearly all privately owned in both the US and UK, and their installation is driven more by insurance company requirements than anything else.
Never mind sealed sessions - try secret trials. There was a trial in the U.K. a little over a decade ago over whether a certain media mogul was engaging in cartel behaviour - and apart from those parties directly involved in the trial, and a few others such as myself who have come to know about the matter through one of the parties involved, nobody even knows it happened. It was deemed to be in the public interest to…
> but it was also deemed a risk to national security for any part of it to be public
Surely it's OK to keep secret if it WAS a matter of national security? Quite possibility that is open to debate in this case, but it seems sensible at least to have this provision in law?
The only reason courthouses are public is so the public can satisfy themselves that the courts are doing their job in a fair way. That is equally satisfied by having the court proceedings sealed for a given time , for example 5 years. By then, the information is nearly worthless to a competitor.
This doesn't really add up to me.
If a currently in progress trial is corrupt, we can prevent the harm that a corrupt outcome will cause before it happens. If you have to wait 5 years to discover that the trial was corrupt then we get at least 5 years of harm out of it. Potentially much more because have to retry the case years later will be much much more difficult due to evidence destruction.