At the high court, lawyers posed the pivotal question: how can exposing crime and torture be worse than committing them?

Which is the more serious criminal activity: extrajudicial killings, routine torture of prisoners and illegal renditions carried out by a state, or exposing those actions by publishing illegally leaked details of how, where, when and by whom they were committed?

That is essentially the question that was asked this week at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It has sometimes seemed during the proceedings that the ornate building at the end of Fleet Street, opened by Queen Victoria in 1882, had become more of a theatre than a court. Outside, vast crowds gathered, chanted, listened to speeches, halted traffic and asked passing drivers to hoot their support. Inside, some of the UK’s leading barristers, watched by journalists from all over the world, spelled out the plot to packed public galleries in overflow courts. This drama started more than a decade ago, yet only now are we approaching the final act.

Government will back bill to curb spurious lawsuits by very rich designed to intimidate journalists and campaigners

Ministers are to support a crackdown on spurious lawsuits aimed at intimidating journalists, academics and campaigners, known as strategic litigation against public participation, or Slapps.

Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, said on Friday that the government would support a private member’s bill brought by the Labour backbencher Wayne David aimed at reducing the use of Slapps in the British courts.

When MPs are intimidated and precedent binned, let’s not pretend there’s any justification – whichever side it comes from

For reasons I won’t trouble you with, I missed the events of Wednesday afternoon and evening in the House of Commons. Normally, that would be a cause for anxiety in a person as committed to service journalism/category 5 drama as myself. Like many in the immediate wake of the political upheavals of 2016, I found myself sinking into the dopamine-assisted rhythms of the new normal, where, on both sides of the Atlantic, you sometimes felt you’d missed an entire news cycle if you left a screen to make a cup of tea.

In 2022, I did a book tour that involved nightly stage events discussing the political turmoil of the past few years/minutes. Because this coincided with the prime ministership of one Liz Truss, there came a point every evening where I worried my information may not be entirely au courant, and had to ask the audience (who had their phones) whether or not she was still prime minister. And, as you’ll recall, one day she wasn’t .

Those who investigate in the public interest should be shielded, but MPs are missing an key opportunity to do that

After a succession of egregious examples, there is widespread agreement that something must be done about the malign phenomenon of strategic lawsuits against public participation, also known as Slapps. If it sounds arcane, it isn’t: it affects us all, in terms of what we say, publish and read, as well as how we make public policy. Last year, the Solicitors Regulation Authority defined the Slapp as “the misuse of the legal system, and the bringing or threatening of proceedings, in order to discourage public criticism or action”.

Three months ago, Wayne David, Labour MP for Caerphilly, introduced as a private members’ bill, the strategic litigation against public participation bill to “make provision about the misuse of litigation to suppress freedom of speech”. A second Commons reading takes place on Friday.

Gill Phillips is a legal consultant and former editorial legal director of the Guardian

Enlarge / Building of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (France). (credit: SilvanBachmann | iStock / Getty Images Plus )

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that weakening end-to-end encryption disproportionately risks undermining human rights. The international court's decision could potentially disrupt the European Commission's proposed plans to require email and messaging service providers to create backdoors that would allow law enforcement to easily decrypt users' messages.

This ruling came after Russia's intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service (FSS), began requiring Telegram to share users' encrypted messages to deter "terrorism-related activities" in 2017, ECHR's ruling said. A Russian Telegram user alleged that FSS's requirement violated his rights to a private life and private communications, as well as all Telegram users' rights.

The Telegram user was apparently disturbed, moving to block required disclosures after Telegram refused to comply with an FSS order to decrypt messages on six users suspected of terrorism. According to Telegram, "it was technically impossible to provide the authorities with encryption keys associated with specific users," and therefore, "any disclosure of encryption keys" would affect the "privacy of the correspondence of all Telegram users," the ECHR's ruling said.

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If the police are satisfied that a protest is safe, ministers should not be stirring suspicion and fear

Political demonstrations are frequently controversial. Any issue that can mobilise tens of thousands of people is likely to involve fierce passions, and provoke strong reactions. In a democracy, those are insufficient grounds for a ban. That is why the Metropolitan police have resisted ministerial pressure to withdraw permission for a Palestinian solidarity march in central London this weekend. Sir Mark Rowley, the Met commissioner, has taken the view that Saturday’s march does not pose a threat to public safety. Downing Street has very reluctantly, and perhaps only temporarily, deferred to that judgment.

Rishi Sunak has expressed his objection in terms of the date. A rally on Armistice Day would be “disrespectful”, according to the prime minister. Whether or not that is true – and the march organisers have tried to accommodate such sensitivities in their choice of route – respectfulness is not a measure of public order. There would be few public demonstrations on any issue if the threshold for a ban were set at breaches of a prime minister’s sense of decorum.

Judge refuses Hong Kong government’s request for injunction, saying it could have chilling effect

Hong Kong’s high court has rejected a government attempt to ban a protest song, Glory to Hong Kong, saying an injunction could create a chilling effect and undermine freedom of expression.

The government had sought the injunction banning online publication or distribution of the song, arguing it insulted China’s national anthem and could give people the impression that Hong Kong was an independent country.

Narendra Modi’s government calls accusation by social media firm’s former CEO an ‘outright lie’

India threatened to shut Twitter down unless it complied with orders to restrict accounts critical of the government’s handling of farmer protests, the social media platform’s co-founder Jack Dorsey has said, an accusation Narendra Modi’s government called an “outright lie“.

Dorsey, who quit as Twitter’s chief executive in 2021, said on Monday that India had also threatened the company with raids on employees if it did not comply with government requests to take down certain posts.