Being a sex worker does not mean you can't have a private life, says judge as Cohen Davis obtains a privacy injunction for its escort client.

In yet another ground breaking case, Cohen Davis’ team has obtained one of our most important judgements this year, whilst securing a privacy injunction for one of our clients, a London Escort.

This case, involved a sex worker who had both false and private information posted about her on the internet. She became the subject of a campaign of harassment, which included the tagging of dozens of pornographic videos with her name. The harassing posts also included references to her sexuality, to her sexual preferences as well as false claims that she was having unprotected sex.

This followed by further false allegations that she was an HIV/Aids positive. Cohen Davis brought the proceedings and an application for a privacy injunction on behalf of our client, who was also granted by the High Court a right to anonymity. She is only know as GYH. Our privacy lawyers took the legal proceedings against "persons unknown" as, despite extensive efforts, we were unable to prove on balance of probabilities the identity of our client’s harasser.

This information might still come to light in the future. Granting an interim privacy injunction, Mr Justice Warby, sitting at the London High Court said that a privacy injunction was "amply justified" to restrain continued harassment of GYH and the misuse of private information about her. The clear message that was sent by the court was that those individuals who provide sexual services are not excluded from a right to have their privacy protected, regardless of the fact that they might be advertising themselves as sex worker.

Mr Justice Warby added that although sex workers who advertised their services on the internet might place some private information in the public domain, to which they may have no reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to that or similar information, there is no question of a person waiving her right to privacy in a particular zone of her private life, merely by publicising some information falling within that zone. In other words, just become someone advertises themselves as sex workers, doesn’t mean that every aspect of sexuality or sex activity can be published without their consent.

In relation to posts online alleging that someone who provides escort services, practised unsafe sex and had contracted HIV/Aids, yet continued to work, there was no justification of allowing such posts to be publicised as long as the information was untrue. The judge added: "There is no public interest in the distribution of false information of this kind, nor is it reasonable to publish false allegations to this effect. On the contrary." Each year Cohen Davis handles dozens of cases involving harassment and breach of privacy of sex workers. The number of our clients who belong to this group is constantly increasing. Sex workers in the UK form part of a particularly volnurable group of individuals. The popularity of the internet in recent years has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of individuals who provide sexual services online and offline. This includes actresses, models, escorts, and prostitutes. There is also a growing number of individuals who take unfair advantage of volnurable sex workers.

Cohen Davis has represented dozens of sex workers and has obtained numerous privacy injunctions in their favour. In some cases, we have been able to facilitate removal of explicit material from the internet, have copyright to it transferred to our clients and obtain compensations for our clients for breach of their privacy and for the distress they have suffered.

Online harassment can occur even if the information published is true

 This is another ground-breaking internet law case by Cohen Davis solicitors. Lawyer Yair Cohen instructed by a former senior employee at the United Nations to put an end to harassment on the internet by another UN employee.

Protection from Harassment interim injunction obtained by Cohen Davis in favour of former senior UN employee  RADA-ORTIZ and ESPINOSA VADILLO [2015] EWHC 2175 (QB).

Meet Jesus Espinosa Vadillo, a former United Nations' (“UN”) temporary employee. In 2014 JEV, who worked as an interpreter at the UN's International Maritime Organisation (“IMO”), felt aggrieved about the way he believed he was being treated by his department manager.

Sometimes individuals who perform in adult films, do so whilst highly vulnerable and at a low point in their lives. Some performers are humiliated and even gang raped on set and from that day onwards they are condemned to re-live their sexual assault on a daily basis through online porn sharing websites. Rape through porn happens when an individual agrees to participate in a pornographic film but in circumstances where their consent can be questioned.

Occasionally, they are not even capable of giving valid consent because they are under the influence of drugs or alcohol or they are fearful.

GYH v PERSONS UNKNOWN [2017] EWHC 3360 (QB)

Cohen Davis Solicitors acting for the Claimant

Being a sex worker and advertising yourself as such on the internet does not mean you can't have a private life, says judge as Cohen Davis obtains a privacy injunction for its escort client.

The client, who advertised herself as an escort hadn’t lost her right to keep information in relation to her sexuality private. Cohen Davis brought the proceedings and an application for a privacy injunction on behalf of our client, who was also granted by the High Court a right to anonymity. She is only known as GYH. Our privacy lawyers took the legal proceedings against "persons unknown" as, despite extensive efforts, we were unable to prove on balance of probabilities the identity of our client’s harasser.

In yet another ground-breaking case, Cohen Davis’ team has obtained one of our most important judgements of this year, whilst securing a privacy injunction for a client we care much about who works as a London Escort. Different people will find the judgement in this case significant for different reasons. If you are a business owner, or work in a business, it means that there should be a separation between your private life and your work life so far as the internet publications are concerned even if on occasions the two aspects of your life may overlap.

Those who provide personal services don’t necessarily have to compromise their right to private life, even if they advertise some aspects of their private life to support their commercial activities. In the case of GYH v PERSONS UNKNOWN, which involved a sex worker who had both false and private information posted about her on the internet, the judge also agreed that there was no public interest in having false information about someone published online, even if that information directly relates to the services the person provides to the public.

GYH became the subject of a campaign of harassment, which included, among other things, the tagging of dozens of pornographic videos with her name. The harassing posts also included references to her sexuality, to her sexual preferences as well as false claims that she was having unprotected sex. These are private matters even in relation to someone who is a sex worker. This followed by further false allegations that she was an HIV/Aids positive. Again, the court agreed that matters concerning one’s health are private matters unless there was a clear public interest in those matters being made public. Granting the privacy injunction, Mr Justice Warby, sitting at the London High Court said that a privacy injunction was "amply justified" to restrain continued harassment of GYH and the misuse of private information about her.

The clear message that was sent by the court was that those individuals who provide sexual services are not excluded from a right to have their privacy protected, regardless of the fact that they might be advertising themselves as sex worker. Mr Justice Warby added that although sex workers who advertised their services on the internet might place some private information in the public domain, to which they may have no reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to that or similar information, there is no question of a person waiving her right to privacy in a particular zone of her private life, merely by publicising some information falling within that zone. In other words, just because someone advertises themselves as sex workers, doesn’t mean that every aspect of their sexuality or sexual activity can be published without their consent. You can read the full judgement in the privacy injunction case of GYH v PERSONS UNKNOWN here.

Right to be forgotten. Does Google delist search results from Google searches worldwide or only from European Google searches?

The purpose of this article is to update our clients on the latest position in relation to successful Right to be Forgotten applications and the current position regarding the removal of  search results from Google worldwide.

Following the Google Spain decision in 2014, Google started to remove offending links under a Right to be Forgotten from the Google searches but only from the applicant’s own country. So a successful Right to be Forgotten application made by a UK citizen would have resulted only in the removal of links to offending pages from Google.co.uk. This was highly unsatisfactory so law firms, including Cohen Davis Solicitors, had made repeated complaints to the Information Commissioner's Office until early in 2015 Google undertook to have offending search results under a Right to be Forgotten removed from all European searches.

Google, we must note, had not fully kept its promise to remove searches from across Europe which means often it has to be nagged at and threatened with legal action before it removes links to offending pages from European search results. By European we mean countries that are members of the European Economic Area and which include Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the UK.

This situation was still unsatisfactory because users in these countries who searched Google.com were still able to view the links to the offending webpages on Google.com search engine. This again, resulted in complaints from Cohen Davis Solicitors and from other law firms across the EEA.

A breakthrough was made in June 2015 after the super active Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), which is the French equivalent of our Information Commissioner's Office, issued Google with a formal enforcement notice, telling Google that it had to include all Google search engine extensions in the delisting process following each successful Right to be Forgotten application. Google appealed but its appeal was rejected so in September 2015 CNIL issued Google with another formal Notice that had the power of an injunction.

It ordered Google to delist, across the board, 21 search results in relation to a French citizen who made a successful Right to be Forgotten application. The Notice stated that the protection under the Right to be Forgotten must apply to all European residents with no possible circumvention. Circumvention means, that Google users can get around the filters Google applies and still see offending search results by using all sorts of technical methods.

Google ignored the Notice and refused to delist the offending search results globally. It wrote to the French data protection regulator saying that the Notice it was issued with was unlawful and that global delisting of search results under the European Right to be Forgotten would represent disproportionate attack on freedom of expression and information. Google representations were rejected. Still, Google refused to apply the Right to be Forgotten globally. Instead, it started to delist offending search results based on IP addresses rather than Google search engine extensions.

So, if you search from a device with a European IP address, offending search results will be hidden from you from all Google search extensions but if your device has an IP address which is outside the EEA, then the offending search results will still show. In short, Google changed the way delisting works by moving away from search extension search results delivery (Google.com or Google.co.uk) to an IP address based delivery. This means that you can search any Google search extension you may, if your device delivers an IP address from the EEA, the offending search results will be hidden.

This presented an issue in relation to individuals who live close to a border between an EEA and a none EEA country who might get mixed results based on the IP address their device uses to carry out the Google search. The French data protection regulator noted this was an improvement in Google’s method of delisting offending search results yet it said that IP address geolocation criterion, which varies the protection given to a European resident according to the geographical location of the individual using the search engine, is, on principle, unsatisfactory insofar as, the delisted information remains accessible to all internet users outside the territory affected by the new filter measure, which can in any event be circumvented by any affected users.

It went as far as to state that only a measure that applies to all processing by the search engine, with no distinction between the extensions used and the geographical location of the internet user making a search, is legally adequate to meet the requirement under the Right to be Forgotten. In light of the repeated violations by Google, the French data protection regulator issued Google with a penalty of 100,000 Euros. Google appealed to France’s highest court, the Council of State (Conseil d’État). A decision in the case is expected by the end of 2017.

Google’s current position is that it will not delist search results from all its search engine extensions as a matter of course. The French data protection regulator’s position is that it must do so. So we are all waiting for the outcome of the appeal.

Cohen Davis’ position is that any data, which is found to be unlawfully processed anywhere in the EEA and which is resulting in delisting of search results under the Right to be Forgotten, must not then be processed outside of the EEA.

This is because under European data protection laws, any organisation that transfers personal data to a country outside of the EEA, must do so under the same conditions of processing which applies to processing of the same data within the EEA.

So, if processing of personal data is unlawful within the EEA, it is must also be unlawful outside of the EEA. Under European data protection law, the emphasis is on the data subject (the individual subject the data which is being processed) so the location of the person who carries out the internet search is irrelevant. This, we note has not been an argument in the French case but we expect European transfer of data regulations to form part of Google's obligations in delisting search results from Google worldwide.

 Follow us on Twitter and we will let you know as soon as the court reaches a decision.

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How to remove nude images and videos from the internet.

Often, models and performers who previously appeared on nude or pornographic videos wish to put their past behind them and move on with their lives.

Many wish to study a profession or start a family. Young adult film performers may have signed copyright assignment agreements with model agencies or with adult film produces which on the face of it give away all their legal rights in relation to the pornographic videos or nude images they now wish to remove from the internet.