Mail gets all atwitter over super-injunctions fiasco

A Twittter user who is posting alleged details of the super-injunctions taken out by actors and sports stars has more than 30,000 followers in a direct challenge to the law and to the immense frustration of the British press gagged by the courts.

The Daily Mail claims today: "The social networking site Twitter today made a mockery of the celebrity trend for using privacy injunctions to hide their identity.A single user, who quickly attracted a following of 5,000, set up an account claiming to ‘out’ those behind the legal gagging orders – but riddled with errors.

"So many Twitter users began exchanging messages supposedly naming high-profile figures who have hidden their secrets that part of the site crashed."

The Mail adds: "The move exposed the total inadequacy of court rulings which gag the press – but have no effective control over what is published online."

The paper quotes Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming saying: "It shows the utter absurdity of what is being done in the courts. It ignores the way that modern communication works.

"Normally these things are kept so that only a few people in North London know what is going on. But more recently people have been coming to my constituency surgery and telling me that they know who these people are."

• Twitter users have also highlighted a quote in yesterday's Mail on Sunday about the actor Hugh Bonneville: "Hugh’s devotion to wife Lulu is so strong it is understood he is known to fellow thespians as the Ryan Giggs of the showbusiness world, after the famously family-orientated footballer."