Category Archives: Information Commissioner

Twitter Threatens to Sue! Del Harvey and Vijaya Gadde Double Down

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Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg once famously described Twitter as being like a clown car that crashed in a gold-mine. Their latest antics, involving their lawyers at Bristows, include writing me one of the worst ‘libel’ letters I have ever seen. The specific lawyers on the case are Alex Keenlyside and Robert Graham. I reproduce the relevant parts below. Then I school them on procedure and more importantly the substantive facts of their case.

Bristows Libel 2020-05-03

Bristows’ letter to my mind is deficient in law. I understand that Robert Graham and Alex Keenlyside are responsible. Image adjusted to show logo above the relevant paragraph.

I received a letter just past 8pm on Friday night. It is a trashy tactic solicitors use that works with many people. However, although I do not practice as a solicitor I have passed the exams (LL.M LPC Commendation) and have nearly 9 years experience as a McKenzie Friend. I have written the pleadings of multiple libel cases so late night letters are less impressive to me, especially given the obvious, negligent and improper failure in this one to comply with the relevant UK law, the Civil Procedure Rules.

Much of the letter is a request for information. Twitter asks for court documents relating to the recent court case in which Esther Baker was found liable for racist harassment because of various proposed legal claims against it, in multiple jurisdictions. The last paragraph however is a demand I remove an article, which is said to be defamatory. Twitter are concerned with my article of 14 April 2020, headlined, “Twitter’s Del Harvey / Alison Shea and Vijay Gadde Openly Back Child Rape Stalker and Anti-Semite Racist”. So far they have not sought to challenge my article, “Labour’s Secret Deal with Twitter and Facebook to Surveil its own members”.

The article complained of referred to Twitter’s decision not to remove proven racist stalker Esther Baker’s account nor the tweets held by a judge to be racist stalking. The same article complained of Twitter’s failure to remove anti-Semitic material posted by a man named Alan Goodwin. As previously covered on MHN, Esther Baker has been successfully sued by former MP John Hemming and a child abuse victim who MHN is anonymising as a courtesy. Twitter, of course, has rules against racism and ‘targeted harassment’ so one would think in light of the lengthy judgement to the effect that Baker engaged in racist targeted harassment over a period of years the issue would be a no-brainer. Nope. “Clown Car”!

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Labour’s Secret Deal with Twitter and Facebook to Surveil its own members

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Vijaya Gadde at a Fortune Event

Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy, Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter, at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech event. Would she be such a popular speaker if Twitter’s approach to real time monitoring of political speech was widely known? Picture by Photograph by Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm TECH. (NC License here).

A leaked internal Labour Party report has hit the headlines (archive) because of lurid statements allegedly made by staff. What has been missed however, receiving barely any coverage, is an apparent admission that, using a secret deal with Facebook and Twitter, the Labour Party has been running automated surveillance on its own members. If true, this is manifestly unlawful – each member affected would almost certainly have a valid claim in damages under Data Protection legislation.

[UPDATE 21 April 2020, 18:10 BST – Have received a response from Twitter, below]

In the furore about the leaked Labour report, many commentators have focused on the supposedly racist, sexist, and / or ableist remarks. There is also the apparent dishonest treacherous plotting. It is important to remember of course that this report was produced by a bitterly infighting party and its contents are disputed. Former staff who were criticised claim that accusations about their conduct were never put to them.

MHN has a copy of the report and leaving all that aside however, this passage leaps out –

Labour Twitter Trot Hunt Software Admission

Labour had automated software that reconciled its privileged access to Twitter and Facebook data with their membership database to identify and monitor member accounts.

It is worth turning to the Data Protection Principles set out in the Data Protection Act 1998, which was in force at the time (replaced by the EU General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018 in May 2018). The principles were set out in section 4 (archive) and Schedule 1 (archive).

Of especial relevance, these principles included processing data, “fairly”, holding data that was “not excessive”. Fairness usually means notifying members of the way their data will be used. A quick glance at Labour’s current terms on its, ‘Join’ page does say that email addresses will be used to contact members. It says nothing about consenting to Orwellian real time monitoring for wrongthink.

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Twitter’s Del Harvey / Alison Shea and Vijaya Gadde Openly Back Child Rape Stalker and Anti-Semite Racist

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Defended banner for articles defended in court

[UPDATE – 17 August 2022. Esther Baker sued over this article in High Court Case QB-2020-001013. She lost. The court granted both summary judgement and strike-out finding the claim had no realistic prospect of success. No other person mentioned sued and the time limit has elapsed. Judgement here. My follow-up article here. This article has been added to the “DEFENDED!” category and readers may rely on it.]

Vijaya Gadde at a Fortune Event

Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy, Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter, 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 and anti-Semitism by the perpetrator’s friends? Picture by Photograph by Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm TECH. (NC License here).

Imagine you were raped as a child by a paedophile Priest. Then imagine that years later, as the trial of the priest took place you were subject to a campaign of racist stalking by a, “particularly malevolent”, vile and mentally ill harasser. The stalking puts your health and life at risk. Eventually, the Priest is convicted and the stalker is bankrupted and made subject to a lifelong restraining Order. Both verdicts are upheld on appeal. Now imagine, that an international social media company Twitter helps and empowers your stalker, who has been associated with prominent Labour MPs like Jess Phillips, and refuses to remove their stalking material, apparently contrary to its own rules.

[UPDATE From Twitter Below – 14 April 2020]

This of course is a real story. Esther Baker was recently bankrupted and made subject to a lifelong restraining Order for the racist stalking of a child abuse victim. Baker is of course publicly known because she was one of the VIP paedophile accusers associated with Exaro News, like Carl Beech. She received support from Labour MPs and was even invited to the House of Commons by Jess Phillips MP. Ironically Phillips is now the Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding.

The judge really did call Baker, “particularly malevolent”. The restraining Order is one of two such Orders she has received because of course she has also been restrained from repeating her, “untrue” allegations about former MP John Hemming. Of course County Court judges see lots of stalkers, family cases and domestics so a finding that stalking is particularly malevolent is saying a lot. Baker was so depraved she even tried to contact the paedophile priest – to try to undermine his conviction! It borders on the immortal line, “So, we got a once in a lifetime, top of the line looney tuney”, from the movie Basic Instinct. Except of course that Baker, who admits to hearing voices, is no Sharon Stone.

Esther Baker is a Malevolent Racist

The express findings of the County Court judge agreeing Baker behaved in a “vindictive, “obsessive” and “malevolent” way. MHN has erased the barrister’s name to protect the anonymity of the victim of Baker’s years of racist stalking. If only Vijaya Gadde, Del Harvey (Alison Shea), Karen White and Sinéad McSweeney over at Twitter would protect them too!

Whilst Baker has occasionally, grudgingly, removed some tweets she has not removed most of the stalking tweets including some that may put her in breach of the various court Orders against her. So, needless to say, Twitter were contacted by some of her victims. John Hemming had also been in contact with Twitter and can produce email receipts from their report form going as far back as 2017. As a result of a number of controversies, Twitter has enacted a number of supposed rules. Targeted harassment is supposedly prohibited (archive). Racist harassment is supposedly prohibited (archive). In the context of hate of protected groups, the Twitter rules state that, “We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs […]”.

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Merseycare Pay Damages Over Esther Baker, Baker Loses Racism Appeal

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The Witchfinder has received £3,500 in damages, an admission of liability and an apology from Merseycare NHS Foundation Trust on the basis that they revealed to Esther Baker that he had raised confidential safeguarding concerns about her. There is no confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement – I am free to tell all. Meanwhile, Esther Baker has lost her appeal against a finding she harassed a proven victim of child abuse, making racist tweets and apparently contacting the victim’s paedophile abuser – with a view to helping the abuser overturn their conviction.

RemittanceSlipMerseycare

Sam Smith, the editor of MHN, has received £3,500 damages for the disclosure of confidential information by Merseycare NHS Foundation Trust. Click for full size.

In late 2018, I raised serious concerns about the well-being of Esther Baker. I wrote to her psychiatrist, Dr Kate Wood and to executives at her local NHS Trust.

All of my concerns have been realised – I warned Esther Baker was at risk of large costs Orders in court proceedings she has unwisely brought and defended. The Orders were made. I warned Baker was at risk of bankruptcy. She has been bankrupted. I warned Baker was at risk of her job. She has lost her job. I warned of further civil and criminal legal troubles – they are in process. I warned Baker was a danger to others – the County Court has found her liable for stalking, the High Court for defamation. In both cases lifelong restraining Orders have been made.

Nearly every risk has materialised.

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Patreon Banned Sargon Yet CEO Jack Conte Allowed Distribution of Illegal Child Pornography and Laundering of the Proceeds

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JackContePomplamoose

This is Jack Conte, the CEO of Patreon and half of musical duo Pomplamoose. He knowingly profited from the distribution of paedophile bestiality fetish material, as well as sexual material related to cannibalism. Image released under CC BY-SA 2.0 for commercial use. Image by Joe Loong on Flickr. License linked here. Click for full size.

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) was banned from Patreon this month for comments not made on the platform. This appears to contradict Patreon’s own statements and some of its actions may arguably violate several laws including the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). That is not just an academic problem, because according to its public website Patreon has a business entity in the UK (archive) – Patreon DLC, Ltd. 8 Soho Square, London, Greater London, W1D 3QL. Sargon could (and arguably should) take action on it. Before I turn to that issue though I would like to remark upon the matter of Patreon ands its CEO Jack Conte knowingly allowing the distribution of illegal child pornography on the platform – at least until I asked VISA and MasterCard to investigate.

I first took a journalistic interest in Patreon last year in my first article and it is worth a brief recap. Lauren Southern, beautiful and extremely capable Canadian journalist had been banned for allegedly endangering the lives of refugees. Incidentally Lauren has now been vindicated – a ‘sting’ recording made on her behalf of an NGO official has proven her correct (archive). Many of the alleged ‘refugees’ were in fact fraudulent migrants facilitated by unscrupulous ‘charity’ workers who groomed them to lie. The only people endangering lives were those helping them make dangerous sea crossings to, at best, an uncertain welcome.

However, my interest arose from the illegal content available on the Patreon platform. A whistleblower sent me a link to the page of a creator called, ‘Waysin’. The page showed a number of censored and blacked out cartoon style drawings of young, underage boys and tentacles. The images were legal, but it was made clear that for a fee the user could view the images without censorship – that is pictures of clearly underage pre-teen boys being bestially raped by tentacles. Such images are criminal to produce, distribute or possess in many states, including Taiwan where the creator of the material said that he lives. For bonus points, Waysin said openly on the public page that he knew the images were illegal in his jurisdiction. Needless to say, I reported the page to Patreon. I did not view the private section – for the avoidance of doubt no unlawful images were viewed or downloaded preparing this article.

IllegalMaterialTentacleRape

Patreon knowingly allowed a user to distribute sexual material related to children that was illegal in the jurisdiction of the user. They allowed them to literally launder the money via Patreon. This account was drawn to the attention of Patreon and Jack Conte personally, but not removed – at least until I involved executives of the payment networks. Click for full size.

The point of time when I made the report is where things become … appalling.

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How the Law Helped Me Get Unbanned From Twitter. Twice. Legal Tools for Cultural Libertarians

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TwitterJail

Twitter – Compliant With EU Data Protection Laws? They better be.

Midway through last year, Twitter moved data control for all non-EU citizens to Ireland in the EU. Twitter then declared its subsidiary, ‘Twitter International Company’ to be a data controller in the EU for all non-US citizens. This brought it under EU Data Protection law.

A few weeks ago on 30/01/2016, a French man won a case in a Paris appeals Court that he could sue Facebook for suspending him,

The Witchfinder comments on how users can use EU law to assert their rights on Twitter.

So last week I was suspended from Twitter. All of my accounts were simultaneously suspended. There was no explanation – no ‘you are a spammer / meanie / aggressive follower’. I assumed the most likely reason was my article criticising Motherboard Associate Editor Sarah Jeong for doxing a rape victim, although this later turned out to be incorrect when they finally did give reasons.

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Google Forced by European Law to Unlist Peter Tatchell Paedophilia Book Exposé

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Peter Tatchell

Peter Tatchell – contributed to the Book, a Betrayal of Youth, edited by former Vice-Chair of the Paedophile Information Exchange, Warren Middleton. Now someone is trying to hide it from Google Search results in Europe.

Thanks to EU legislation, search giant Google has been forced to censor awkward facts from its European search results. A few days ago I received a notice of de-linking of a page on this site and given the chilling implications, I thought it worth sharing.

In March 2014, with the help of amazing Sun journalist @LouiseMensch, I wrote an exposé of a British activist called Peter Tatchell. It is still on this site, entitled, “Peter Tatchell – Sex Brought ‘Great Joy’. To 9 Year Olds”. Tatchell is well known in Britain as a human rights activist but back in the mid 1980s he contributed to a book called “The Betrayal of Youth” (perhaps not coincidentally, “Betrayal of Youth”, stands for ‘Boy’). He had also written a letter to the Guardian newspaper (which they had published) in which he appeared to say that sex with adults had brought some nine-year-olds, ‘great joy’.

Several of the contributors to the book were avowed paedophiles. For example the editor of the book was Warren Middleton (also known as John Parratt), now a convicted paedophile (archive here). At his trial in 2011, the prosecutor told the court that Middleton was part of a group of paedophiles who would meet up to look at illegal images of underage boys. Found at the home Middleton shared with another paedophile were three discs containing over 5,000 images. Perhaps there may be some connection between Middleton’s interests and the title of the book.

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Block Bot Administrator and Physics Teacher Marian Aanerud (@MAMelby) In Twitter Rant After Losing Job

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The Witchfinder responds to serious allegations by former University of Minnesota Rochester, physics teaching specialist Marian Aanerud (@MAMelby), made in a bizarre online Twitter rant today connected with the loss of her job. Note that Aanerud states she is not anonymous and is open about her former employer and real name so this is not ‘doxing’. Please see her public, written, consent here (archive here). She also makes clear her (former) employer is not anonymous here (archive here). In accordance with her public requests on Twitter I have omitted her middle names.

Your author wishes to clarify that he has had no contact with Aanerud or her employer since May 2015. However, I am entitled to respond to her allegations. Also, there is a public interest in raising concern about her use of homophobic language online, her inappropriate comments about paedophilia and previous student criticism of the standard of her teaching and conduct.

MelbyRatingsUnflattering

Marian Aanerud received the 2nd lowest rating of 20 teachers at the University of Michigan, Flint. Click full size.

So last year, I wrote many articles about the Atheism+ Block Bot. As a brief recap, the Block Bot is a blocking tool like many others, which at the time had the added feature of a searchable database. The database contained many very serious and unpleasant allegations, as well as comments about protected characteristics like race or transgender status.

As a result, a number of celebrities supported the campaign, in particular this article which Richard Dawkins shared with his million + followers.

In response, the Block Bot team repeatedly accused me of stalking. Cambridge police found that this was not the case. This much, I have already shared. What I had not shared publicly until now was that afterwards the Block Bot team reported me to police again. This time the complaint was to Hampshire police.

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Rational Wiki #1 – David Gerard and the Paedophiles of Wikipedia

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The Witchfinder has noted the controversy over Rational Wiki (RW) and its highly tendentious articles about #GamerGate. Your author feels it is time they felt some scrutiny in return.

David_Gerard - Parodised

David Gerard, a model of reason and sanity. This parody looks better than the original (which had scary, cold, dead eyes) and also falls under s30A Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Earlier this year, Milo Yiannopoulos wrote scathingly of Rational Wiki (archive here), “RationalWiki entry for GamerGate says I’m guilty of “ethical violations.” The proof offered is… a link to Tumblr.”

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“Abhorrent” – Patreon Donors React to Randi Harper Revelations

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The Witchfinder explains himself, answers baseless blackmail allegations and releases heartening (anonymised) information about some of Randi’s (former) subscribers.

I remember my first interaction with Randi Harper well. In fact I wrote an article about it. I had created, as obvious satire (literally labelled ‘parody’) a ‘Bot for Endangered Sealions’. A while later, I started to receive tweets. Lots of tweets. I tried to reply only to find the stranger who was sending them had blocked me. It was Randi Harper.

ImaginaryRobot

Randi Harper is very, very angry. She is also very, very dumb.

Soon after, a small group of her friends started trying to brigade me using discriminatory language. When I shared my article about her with supporters, one of them called it a ‘meltdown’. I laughed at them. Continue reading →

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