Category Archives: Information Commissioner

“Project Nightwatch / @PNWNET” Removes Materials After Police Contact – Police Apologise – It Was Not Simon Just

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The Twitter / x.com account @PNWNet, along with an associated WordPress blog, mordred8.wordpress.com have been removed by their owner. MHN can exclusively reveal this followed police intervention combined with MHN beginning formal civil legal processes to unmask the account operator. Police have also looked into the allegation it is Simon Just and apologised to him in writing. Provided the @PNWNet successor(s) on Bluesky and elsewhere do not draw me into their dramas again, that is the end of the matter from my perspective. Other anonymous account operators should take note.

Police apologised to Simon Just over false allegations he operates Project Nightwatch.

Police apologised to Simon Just over false allegations he operates Project Nightwatch. They were then given the information to contact the real owner, which coincided with, shortly thereafter, the @PNWNet, ‘X’ account and an associated blog being removed.

The so-called, “Project Nightwatch” account(s) on X, WordPress and elsewhere have been of growing concern to MHN and police for some time. There is a court case going on in the Sussex area. Police are properly anxious it not be disrupted by imprudent posts. I was separately concerned about being drawn into dramas that have nothing to do with me. After a number of warnings online, I stopped making public comment and quietly started real-world legal process, serving Enix Limited, which hosts the project, with a pre-action letter and draft court papers.

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@RedotEngine Makes Progress – @GodotEngine Mismanagement Exposed

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A week ago MHN published an article on a split in the @GodotEngine community caused by perceived partisan political posturing and high-handed bans. This week, I revisited the two repositories to see whether new rival fork the Redot Engine (@RedotEngine on Twitter, @Redot-Engine on Github) were making any actual development progress. I observed that Redot were beginning to ramp up and move forward. Whilst trying to compare, I discovered that @GodotEngine had left pull requests (units of completed programming work) open and unresolved for over five years. Based on the Godot Engine project’s own public records and my experience as a Senior Software Developer and owner of an IT firm, in my opinion that is mismanagement by the Godot Engine maintainers.

The Godot Game Engine project maintainers have left *completed* work by volunteer developers to languish for over five years without approving or rejecting.

The Godot Game Engine project maintainers have left *completed* work by volunteer developers languish for over five years without approving or rejecting. If it still, ‘needs work’ after five years the request should be closed and they can always open a new one if they want to submit an improved version.

Redot Engine is a fork of the moderately well known open source project, the Godot Game Engine. It was formally launched last week after posts by project members were perceived by some as partisan political comments. This was accompanied by controversial bans and social media blocks which alienated a significant chunk of the Godot community. I followed up to see if there was any development substance to the new project or whether it was just political noise.

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The Godot Game Engine, Juan Linietsky, Nathalie Galla, Purges, Misogyny and Abuse

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Juan Linietsky is the founder of the open source product the Godot Game Engine. He has set his Twitter profile private after a storm of protest hit the project, including over his own statements.

Juan Linietsky is the founder of the open source product the Godot Game Engine. He has set his Twitter profile private after a storm of protest hit the project, including over his own statements, which could amount to unlawful discrimination if made in jurisdictions such as the UK.

The popular open-source project for the game making tool Godot Game Engine is imploding after describing itself as #Wokot on Twitter, facing allegations of political purges and unlawful processing of user data, leading to a storm of condemnation by users, donor exits and the creation of a rival ‘fork’ called the Redot Engine. The problem has been worsened by a tone deaf post about gender politics from founder Juan Linietsky which may be seen by some as pro-transgender, but, although he may not have intended it, in your author’s opinion may be seen by others as endorsing abuse and misogyny. In some jurisdictions, the post could be seen as unlawful discrimination or creating a hostile environment.

The Godot Game Engine is an open-source tool for making games. For those readers unfamiliar with software development, it is a pre-written library of code that can be used to avoid reinventing the wheel when making games. Such libraries are popular because they save a lot of time and money. They are not generally political and nothing in the Godot Engine license has any political content, instead using the popular MIT license.

Problems at the project began on 27 September 2024 when the official account posted this tweet (archive):

The Godot Engine official account triggered the controversy by describing the engine as #Wokot.

The Godot Engine official account triggered the controversy by describing the engine as #Wokot.

The post, to MHN’s mind is gauche, but it was probably not the cause of the project’s problems. The project was responding to ludicrous assertions online that only ‘woke’ game developers used engines, which is absurd. Lots of companies use engines from a variety of commercial and open-source brands. What really triggered the outrage was blocking people for mild dissent and requests for technical fixes:

A developer sent this mildly critical message only to be blocked.

A developer sent this mildly critical message only to be blocked.

Twitter user @funnygamedev tweeted the above message asking for fixes to bitmap font functions (archive), only to be blocked shortly thereafter (archive). Other users reported similar experiences, only to be blocked. Some users even complained of being blocked when they had never used or interacted with the @GodotEngine account [1] (archive) [2] (archive).

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The Failures of Ofsted’s Sarah Canto and Jo Fisher, Director of Hertfordshire Children’s Services

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Jo Fisher

Jo Fisher, the Executive Director of Children’s Services at Hertfordshire County Council, has achieved a supposed, ‘Outstanding’ for her department on a recent Ofsted inspection … but is it deserved, or have systemic problems been missed by the regulator?

In modern public life, it has become all too clear that there are two sorts of public services that achieve, “Outstanding” ratings on regulatory inspections. Those which are actually delivering a good service, and those which simply hide failures and conceal problems, including abuse. For example, a hospital for the vulnerable known as Whorlton Hall received a CQC rating of, ‘good’ until it was exposed by BBC Panorama as an institution in which staff systematically, cruelly, abused disabled adults (archive). A clue as to which sort Hertfordshire County Council (HCC) is can be found in a Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman (LGSCO) report from 2021, reported in the Herts Advertiser that, “Herts Council has ‘pattern of mishandling children’s services complaints'” (archive). At the time, the Hertfordshire County Council, Director of Children and Young People was Jo Fisher. MHN has been horrified recently to identify similar and ongoing problems, some of which have now been admitted, which have not been picked up in a recent Ofsted inspection of the authority. The circumstances raise questions about the leadership and suitability of Jo Fisher, Sarah Canto from Ofsted who recently inspected Hertfordshire County Council Children’s Services and also Amanda Spielman, Chief Inspector at Ofsted. Weak leadership and weak procedures risk enabling abuse. In my opinion, Hertfordshire County Council and Ofsted have both.

Hertfordshire County Council Safeguarding Times

Hertfordshire County Council safeguarding times … could be improved … if this output from its system is to be believed, showing a child safeguarding referral open for around 20 months. Screenshot anonymised and taken on 11 April 2023.

How long should it take a council to deal with a safeguarding concern? A week, two weeks? A month? Baby P did not even live two years, and he spent much of it experiencing horrific abuse (archive) before his tragic death at 17 months. The question is not rhetorical. I made three child protection referrals about a family (who have been anonymised here), via the Hertfordshire County Council system and the first is still showing as, ‘Open’ after nearly two years. Reading the referral screen, I was concerned that at best, the council workflow system is insufficiently robust. At worst the case was ignored.

Child protection matters in the UK are rightly highly confidential. I would not expect much response as the result of a referral. I would have expected, however, the state to change from, ‘open’ to, ‘triaged’ or ‘reviewed’. In fact, until a recent complaint, I have never had anything from the council beyond an automated email acknowledgement to show these reports were submitted. It is clear, however, that something happened with the more recent ones due to what seems to be a subsequent breach of confidence by the council.

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2000 Trees and James Scarlett to be Sued, Bankrupted?

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Will this post ruin James Scarlet's Career?

This post by the 2000 Trees Festival could ruin James Scarlet’s career forever, and leave him personally bankrupt.

I have just been asked to look at a case of what may be appalling abuse and misconduct by a music festival operator, James Scarlett. James is the organiser of the 2000 Trees music festival, which is operated by the Real Festival Company Limited. It appears that online allegations were made about abuse by a band member. The band member denies the allegations, and as far as I can determine so far has never been convicted or even invited for questioning by police. The festival, having seen the allegations, dropped him with a statement that appears to contain the false imputation that there was a meaningful investigation with an adverse outcome finding the allegations upheld. The festival then invited further comment from random members of the public. In effect, inviting gossip and speculation on the official 2000 Trees Facebook, whilst apparently deleting exculpatory posts. MHN is considering extending pro-bono support to the band. If the firm running the festival, the Real Festival Company Limited, is bankrupted that could affect its ability to pay acts – and the reputations of those associated with the firm or James. Other acts may need to consider whether they will stay on the line-up for the at-risk festival.

For those of you who do not know me, perhaps coming from 2000 Trees fansite or wherever, I am a law blogger. I have passed a Master’s Degree in Law (Legal Practice) with the solicitor’s exams (LL.M LPC) but not sought to practice as a solicitor. I do help people in court as a McKenzie Friend at the highest level – only ever for charity. For example, I was praised in Parliament helped a vulnerable woman accused of lacking mental capacity obtain a court declaration she had capacity and therefore retain her autonomy and her children (link to Parliament).

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Whistleblower Sends Evidence BNT Held Personal Identity Document for Years

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It is late, and I was only up watching TV. I have just received a whistleblower email making an incredibly serious allegation about Brand New Tube, the troubled online video sharing website hacked in 2020 and again earlier this month, that hosts controversial fringe content like ‘journalist’ Sonia Poulton. This is bad stuff.

I had to check a couple of things because I frankly did not believe it and I needed to check some HTML quickly from a third party site. I will need to call the ICO in the morning. I can say this goes way beyond passwords and emails. Full details tomorrow but there is incontrovertible proof that a lot of data was held that Brand New Tube did not declare as breached.

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Could the UK High Court Case of Smith v Baker Determine the Delaware Case of Twitter v Musk et al and the Fate of Twitter’s Vijaya Gadde?

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Vijaya Gadde at a Fortune Event

Vijaya Gadde at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech event. Would she be such a popular speaker if she was properly no-platformed due to her allowing vile stalking and racism against a child rape victim as well as anti-Semitism? Picture by Photograph by Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm TECH. (NC License here).

On 4 April 2020, I published the article, “Twitter’s Del Harvey / Alison Shea and Vijaya Gadde Openly Back Child Rape Stalker and Anti-Semite Racist”. Multiple parties, including Twitter, threatened lawsuits. Twitter did not make good on their threats. Esther Baker attempted to do so. The lawsuit over the article, brought by Esther Baker in the High Court in London, was commenced in 2020 (before the Twitter purchase was proposed) and determined in my favour last week. The lawsuit has the potential to harm Twitter’s reputation. So, did Twitter know about it, and did they disclose it to Elon Musk when they formed the purchase agreement between Twitter and Musk currently being litigated in Delaware in the United States? Did Twitter notify Musk of the legal risks arising from the matters in this article – “Labour’s Secret Deal with Twitter and Facebook to Surveil its own members”? The article ended with an express threat to draw it to the attention of the relevant regulatory law enforcement body.

It is worth recapping for new readers. In 2020 I was covering a significant amount of what, in my opinion, was wrongdoing by Twitter. The Labour Party head office team had been using an in-house application that used their database of member emails, cross-referenced with privileged access to the Twitter API, to scan their members’ tweets for statements warranting disciplinary action. It is unclear if members’ consent was ever clearly sought for this by either the Labour Party or Twitter, or whether they were told about it. It is likely that would have been a legal requirement for processing to be compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The second issue was Twitter’s inconsistent handling of complaints of breaches of its rules. Esther Baker, had, at the time, been made subject to two restraining orders by UK courts. One was for libel and the other was for, in the words of His Honour Judge Gargan, “particularly malevolent” and “racist” stalking. One of her supporters, Alan Goodwin, had made plainly anti-Semitic posts including gratuitous, utterly baseless, speculation that a senior British government minister had conspired with Mossad to cover up child abuse. The actions of Esther Baker (@Esther9982) and her supporter Alan Goodwin (@Ciabaudo), followed by Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde’s failure to deal with them even after being thoroughly put on notice, were the subjects of my 4 April article.

Around 8pm on 1 May 2020, I received a letter from UK lawyers Bristows telling me that my article was libellous and there was, “no conceivable chance of defending” it as truth or honest opinion and saying it should be, “removed immediately”. I refused, and published the relevant section of the letter and mocked them in this article. I then requested further information under UK pre-action rules. Much as Elon Musk complains, Twitter were curiously reluctant to answer my questions and backed off as I detailed in my later article, “Twitter and Bristows in Humiliating Libel Climb Down”.

Extract from Bristows' Email of 6 May 2020

Bristows now claim they were never threatening to sue me on behalf of Twitter. That letter they sent me late on a Friday night was just abstract information shootin’ the breeze.

Bristows are a proper libel law firm and therefore know better than to test me in court. I stand by the article. Vijaya and her colleagues have in effect supported the actions of Esther Baker and Alan Goodwin by not banning / permanently suspending them from Twitter, when others have been banned without recourse for far lesser wrongdoing. In fact Twitter did not even remove the tweets that were the actus re of the stalking, just made them inaccessible in the UK.

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YouTuber Ann Drogyne to be Sued?

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A Scary Legal Hammer

Allegations of serious crimes, like child rape, may not end well for the publisher when made in a non-privileged context.

The Witchfinder has been asked to assist in a possible court case, pro-bono, against YouTuber Ann Drogyne.

Recently, I have become aware of an argument between YouTuber “Ann Drogyne” and another minor YouTuber. A bit of a flame feud. I did not want to get involved because although my sympathies lie with their opponent, I cannot fight all the battles of everyone else on the internet. I was also of the view that there was an element of the old adage, “six of one, half-a-dozen of the other”.

Then Drogyne started posting calling her opponent a, “self-confessed child rapist”, on multiple websites. I have to say, that is going a bit far. From the records I have seen, the alleged rape was supposed to have occurred in 1992, 30 years ago. The alleged perpetrator was investigated at the time. They denied it at the time. Said it never happened. Police were given the names of the other parties. One can believe the alleged perpetrator’s account that police asked the alleged victim about it and the person denied it happened. No further action was taken. A journalist who repeated the allegation was later criticised by a judge for other questionable actions at the time.

The allegation seems to me to blatantly exceed the threshold in s1 Defamation Act 2013. It seems to me it will be hard to prove Truth given the contemporary denials, and the fact the only person who could possibly support the allegation, the journalist, says they cannot remember and also was criticised by a judge for other similar articles at the time. In fact, they were also interviewed by police and blamed a number of errors on sub-editors. Similarly, to use the defence of Public Interest, Drogyne would have (to simplify) show the criteria were met. The defence is not a cover-all, it is intended to cover balanced responsible reporting. I find it difficult to see how it could cover what was published.

I am also not sure about the compliance with the GDPR. Clearly an allegation of sex crime falls under Article 9 GDPR, assuming there is no exemption (e.g. domestic use, journalism).

I think there are grounds to investigate whether Drogyne has committed some civil wrongs. Subject of course to Drogyne’s right to explain or provide some defence.

After a recent video, Drogyne has today received a letter of claim from her opponent. I am providing pro-bono support. Oops. Still, perhaps they have a reasonable defence or explanation. We shall see in due course.

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40,000 Reasons to Praise the Lord: Smith v Whitbread Group PLC

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A case update. I am suing a local pub in Welwyn Garden City, the Stanborough, pursuant to the Equality Act 2010 in the County Court. The named Defendant is the owner Whitbread Group PLC. On 6 January 2021 the court heard an application in public (with a member of the public in attendance), by the Defendant to strike out my claim. The application failed, leaving Whitbread to sip up most of their costs bill of over £38,000. They were instead ordered to pay my costs of £2,012 within 28 days, making a net loss of around £40,000 – perhaps a little less as some costs may apply to the trial. The costs of the interlocutory application are extinguished, meaning barring appeals, they will never get most of the £38K back even if they win at trial. Oops.

Picture of the Stanborough Pub

The Stanborough Pub, Welwyn Garden City, under darkened skies.

There are a number of legitimate public interest concerns about the case, the pub and the way the Defence has so far been conducted. For example, the average costs of an entire fast track county court case are around £15,000. The Defendant in this case tried to claim nearly £40K for a 3 hour hearing then when they failed, actually tried to argue it was unreasonable of me to seek my costs of legal advice! The judge, DDJ Octavia Knox Cartwright Ordered them to pay my costs instead and did not subtract a penny from my costs schedule.

The judge rejected the application by Whitbread to strike out my original pleadings, and their application to grant summary judgement on those pleadings. She also gave me permission to modify the pleadings by adding three half sentences. As the other side resisted my application, they were ordered to pay my costs. They can claim costs of replying to the three new half sentences, but reasonable costs arising from these are likely to be de minimis and as with all costs these can be assessed by a judge if Whitbread try to claim more. The judge held my claim has a, ‘realistic’ prospect of success.

As readers will know, I am legally qualified and have passed the LL.M LPC with a Commendation. Although I have not sought to use my LPC to practice as a solicitor, I have 10 years experience as a McKenzie Friend. In this case however, I sought a second opinion from a barrister as a sanity check on my work. I cannot share that advice as it would waive privilege, but what I can say is that I have been indemnified by a kindly philanthropist. This is a wealthy individual who considers the case has merit and is in the public interest, and has signed an agreement to pick up the tab if I lose. They have seen the advice, and are not feeling very concerned.

I am preparing a much longer article about the case because the effect of a public hearing is to put the entire bundle into the public domain under the collateral use rule. As a Christian I felt I should share this article with gratitude, but before publishing an article with more detail I want to give the Defendants pause to think this through and seek an amicable resolution.

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Twitter and Bristows in Humiliating Libel Climb Down

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On Friday night, 1st May 2020 I received a letter from UK solicitors Bristows instructed by Twitter. They demanded I take down my article of 14 April 2020 about Twitter, claiming it was defamatory of unnamed staff. Now, after I wrote back pointing out I was legally qualified and identifying their procedural errors, they claim this was just an informational comment, and not a libel threat at all and they do not have to reply to my requests for information as they are not proceeding with the Pre-Action Protocol they have to follow in England before suing me.

Extract from Bristows' Email of 6 May 2020

Bristows now claim they were never threatening to sue me on behalf of Twitter. I understand that Robert Graham and Alex Keenlyside are responsible. Image adjusted to show headed paper logo above the relevant paragraph.

In England, the Civil Procedure rules require that before suing someone you write them a letter and try to resolve the claim with them. In libel, the applicable rule is the Pre-action Protocol for Media and Communications Claims. If a party fails to follow the rules, the court can impose tough sanctions like ordering them to pay some or all of the other side’s legal fees even if they ‘win’ and the other party ‘loses’.

As pointed out in my previous article, in their letter to me, Bristows were missing a lot of important information such as (for example) the name of any natural person claimant, details of the alleged serious harm and other elements required by UK law. Of particular importance the claimant has to set out which facts they dispute and why. Therefore I sent them a request for information under the protocol to include the missing information. Bristows now claim they were never following the protocol at all and so do not have to make any disclosures. It follows that there is no intent to sue me at all. I will still consider complaints and further letters with an open mind but in the absence of the requested information see no reason to remove or modify my article.

That is, my article naming Vijaya Gadde and Del Harvey (née Alison Shea) and stating that they had intentionally and in breach of Twitter’s supposed policy allowed vile harassment / stalking of a child abuse victim and anti-Semitic hate speech. My article also stated that, in effect, they were backing the anti-Semite and the stalker by allowing them to continue to post. I am not in receipt of any clear factual statement from Twitter setting out any basis as to why those allegations are wrong.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg once famously described Twitter as being like a clown car that crashed in a gold-mine. Apparently, this is also true of their lawyers.

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