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srtjstjsj | 4 years ago

> He described how the judges found Murray guilty of “jigsaw identification,” which refers to the “possibility that a person may piece together information from various sources to arrive at the identification of a protected witness.”

Why isn't every advertising/marketing data broker in jail for "jigsaw identification"?

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cstross|4 years ago

In Scottish law -- and in English/Welsh law in parallel (the legal systems are different) -- there is no absolute right of free speech, like the US first amendment. Consequently, exposing the identity of witnesses (and in some cases the accused and the victim) in a criminal trial is itself a criminal offense.

Note the important bit here is in a criminal trial. Murray is going to prison because he was found guilty of actions which threatened to cause a mistrial in a criminal case, not because he was deanonymizing advertising/marketing data.

makomk|4 years ago

I'm pretty sure journalists have actually, non-hypothetically caused mistrials in criminal cases through their reporting in the UK and not been jailed for it. In fact as far as I can tell none of the journalists who did this in the UK have been jailed, at least not in the last few decades.

dahfizz|4 years ago

I'm pretty confident that advertisers would not keep an `is_protected_witness` flag in their profiles.