Burden has been a successful writer and entrepreneur for 20 years. His most recent book “News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings” stirred up controversy by exposing the methods of those who make a living exposing others. He is a frequent commentator on matters concerning the right to privacy and blogs regularly on the subject.
Born 1971. British lawyer and writer. Green is a former legal correspondent for the New Statesman, a columnist on law and policy for the Financial Times and also blogs as Jack of Kent. Has written on legal matters for The Guardian, The Lawyer, New Scientist and other publications. Gave his views to the Inquiry on regulation and self-regulation, and asked the Inquiry not to interpret the phrase “freedom of the press” as referring just to the rights and privileges of the press.
Born 1951. British-Irish, right-wing political blogger, who publishes the Guido Fawkes website. His website was described by The Daily Telegraph as "one of Britain's leading political blogsites" in 2007.
A former journalist, Stearns was Head of Media at the Metropolitan Police at the time of the Inquiry. His evidence was volunteered rather than formally sought and he attempted to put in context the work of the press office which dealt with 200-300 journalistic calls a day from the media. Following major incidents, this number could rise to 1,000 or more calls, all requiring individual responses, he told the Inquiry.
British Barrister specialising in human rights, with a strong civil law background. Wagner founded the multi-award-winning human-rights charity Rights Info and the acclaimed UK Human Rights Blog. He spoke at the Inquiry of the “rough ethical system” emerging in respect to blogging and tweeting.
Founded 2004. American online social-media and networking-service company based in Menlo Park, California. Richard Beecroft Allan, Facebook's director of public policy for Europe at the time of the Inquiry, gave evidence and was questioned about policy concerning inter alia pornography, bullying, violence and hate speech, as well as on Facebook's policies on removal of posted comments.
Twitter UK is the wholly owned subsidiary of Twitter International Company, an affiliate company of Twitter, Inc. Twitter UK provides marketing and sales support services to Twitter International in connection with sales of advertising to customers in the UK. In a voluntary statement, it made clear that Twitter UK had no control over the Twitter service. At the time of giving evidence, Twitter had not blocked content to users in the UK which people in other countries could see. Twitter would consider whether such an action was necessary on a case-by-case basis.
