• Jemima Khan condemns claims about her as untrue
• Online defiance reinforces calls for UK privacy law
The authority of the United Kingdom's civil courts increasingly fragileafter the names of celebrities said to have obtained gagging injunctions – and their alleged misdemeanours – were circulated unimpeded on Twitter.
Amid signs that lawyers representing aggrieved clients are unable or reluctant to take action against the US-based site or its users, the ability of the wealthy to suppress inconvenient truths and falsehoods appears severely compromised.
Online defiance of the courts reinforced calls for the government to draft a privacy law that would clarify what should be permitted under freedom of speech and how far privacy should be protected.
A solicitor whose firm represents several of those identified called on judges and the attorney general, Dominic Grieve, to consider whether flouting of court-imposed superinjunctions and anonymised orders should be punished officially.
Charlotte Harris, a media specialist at the law firm Mischon de Reya, said: "We are not going to be suing people on Twitter. You can't sue people who have never been served with an order.
"If members of the public discuss [injunctions], it ought to be a safe place for them to have a conversation."
Harris said she was interested in going after whoever initially placed the information on Twitter. "There has been terrible mis-characterisation of the people involved," she said. "In 80% of the cases they involve blackmail, harassment, stalking or threats to families. It's not all famous footballers. This is about using freedom of speech as an excuse."
Asked whether court injunctions were becoming unenforceable, Harris said: "We have to think carefully about how to enforce them. We will be taking action against the source of the leak. There may be ways for the judges or the attorney general to [launch proceedings].
"I don't think it should be left to my client to expose himself to more pain than he has already been through." A privacy law is needed in Britain, she added.
The human rights campaigner and socialite Jemima Khan, one of those named inaccurately on Twitter, described weekend claims that she has taken out a gagging order preventing "intimate photos" of herself and Jeremy Clarkson being published as a "bloody nightmare".
Khan said the rumours were "untrue and upsetting", and addedon Monday: "I hope the people who made this story up realise that my sons will be bullied at school because of it. Plus I'm getting vile hate tweets."
Dan Tench, a partner in media law at the solicitors Olswang, which has obtained injunctions for clients, said: "We are not looking to do anything. The sensible thing would be to ignore it. Loads of things turn up on Twitter.
"If one spent all day trying to work out what is accurate there wouldn't be much left of the day. It's not unenforceable. We have led the way in bringing actions against anonymous internet sites. You can take people down. But in a breach of privacy case, it's not entirely consistent with keeping your identity private."
Twitter's legal status has not been tested in court, but lawyers believe the website would be able to successfully argue that it is not a publisher.
In the closest similar case, Mr Justice Eady ruled in 2009 that Google and other search engines were not publishers in a defamation hearing.
In a statement on Monday, Twitter said: "We don't comment on individual accounts. In keeping with our policy, we review reports that accounts violate the Twitter rules and terms of service."
Earlier, the company told the Guardian: "On a practical level, we simply cannot review all 55m plus tweets created … every day. There are tweets that we do remove, such as illegal tweets and spam. However, we make efforts to keep these exceptions narrow so they may serve to prove a broader and more important rule – we strive not to remove tweets on the basis of their content."
Twitter could be served with a court order forcing it to disclose the identity of anonymous tweeters breaching the injunctions.
The attorney general's office acknowledged that it could theoretically initiate proceedings for breach of a civil court order in the public interest but said there were no plans to do so.
A spokeswoman explained: "It would normally be for any aggrieved party to bring proceedings".
The breaching of a civil court orders is technically a contempt of court. It is punishable by up to two years in prison but such cases are rare.
Mark Stephens, a senior media lawyer at Finers Stephens Innocent, said the Twitter user behind the allegations "should expect a knock on the door within the next 48 hours" from solicitors representing the stars. "If it is false, it is libellous; if it is true, it is contemptuous," he added.
The Liberal Democrat Treasury minister, Danny Alexander, signalled that superinjunctions were turning into a political problem. "The whole situation is getting farcical," he said. "A parallel universe is emerging called the twittersphere where the law does not apply.
"It is clear to me that the status quo is no longer an option. There are people out there who clearly have not taken out a superinjunction who are being put in a very difficult position."
"As some one who believes very strongly in freedom of speech, as Liberal Democrats do, the status quo cannot be an option any longer. What is emerging on Twitter is because the current positon is not sustainable."
The Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming told the Guardian that his attempts to put down written questions about individual injunctions were being thwarted by House of Commons officials. "For some time courts have been covering up bad practice using confidentiality and privacy as a reason to do so," he said.