Attorney General Dominic Grieve Credit: Steve Punter Speaking on BBC's Law in Action programme, Grieve said today that individuals could be prosecuted for contempt of court for breaching privacy injunctions on the social networking site.
Twitter played a significant part in the recent exposure of Ryan Giggs' alleged affair with model Imogen Thomas, after John Hemming MP said in court that 75,000 Twitter users who had named the player had made the injunction untenable.
At least two Twitter accounts have been set up anonymously over the past few months with the express purpose of naming celebrities alleged to have obtained injunctions.
It would normally be the responsibility of those in possession of a breached injunction to enforce it, said Grieve. But he warned that he would take action against individuals himself if he thought it was necessary to uphold the rule of law.
"I will take action if I think that my intervention is necessary in the public interest, to maintain the rule of law, proportionate and will achieve an end of upholding the rule of law. It is not something, however, I particularly want to do."
He also said warned that newspapers that "dropped heavy hints" about the identity of someone protected by an injunction could face prosecution.
Leading media lawyer Mark Stephens told Journalism.co.uk today that Grieve's comments represented a "laudable attempt to control breaches of injunctions", but said that any attempt to prosecute individual Twitter users would be problematic if the user hadn't been made aware of the injunction in detail.
"It's clear that Twitter users are making a monkey of the system, and the judges and lawyers and Dominic Grieve have to do everything within their power to encourage them to comply.
"The problem is that the injunctions would need to have been actually served on Twitter users or they would need to be made aware of the details of the injunctions with sufficient particularity to comply.
"You are restricting people's right to free speech upon sanction of imprisonment, and they have to be abundantly clear as to exactly what they can and can't say."
"So the problem is serving an order on all Twitter users, you would have to show that the order was brought to the attention of the user and they fully understood the details of the order."
Stephens added that those most at risk would not be the Twitter users, but any journalist who had been served the injunction who was later shown to have leaked the information prior to it being exposed on Twitter.
Grieve said in the House of Commons two weeks ago that he had no intention to prosecute any individuals over the naming of Giggs on Twitter, nor newspaper columnist Giles Coren, who used the site to name another footballer protected by an injunction.
But he warned at the time that users who thought they could "act with impunity" online could be in for "a rude shock".
Grieve also announced the launch of a cross-part committee to examine possible improvements to the law surrounding privacy injunctions. The committee was established at the recommendation of David Cameron, who said on ITV the same day that the law needed to "catch up with how people consume media today".
Twitter's European chief Tony Wang said last month that the company would hand over the details of users who broke the law where it was "legally required".
A footballer, still known only as "CTB" in the courts, launched a high court action against Twitter in May in an attempt to force the site to hand over information about individuals who had broken a privacy injunction.
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