The question facing the court was whether to grant an injunction preventing the Times from revealing Mr Horton’s identity. There was nothing in law preventing the Times from revealing his identity if the injunction was not granted.

It was up to Mr Horton to convince the judge that the injunction was justified in the first place. Only then would the question of public interest have been considered.

The judge refused the injunction because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”.

The comments the judge made about how he might have behaved if he had considered the public interest argument were hypothetical.

The point I am making is that no newspaper (or blogger or anyone else) needs to provide a public interest defence in order to “out” someone. It doesn’t matter if you are a policeman breaking a statutory obligation or someone writing about fishing.

If you want to be anonymous then the onus is on you to convince a judge you should be, and this case suggests you’ll probably fail.

Privacy laws do exist (look up Madonna’s wedding pictures – btw I am not sure how to link in this comment box) but while your comment that “a breach of someone’s privacy” took place is a reasonable view from an ethical perspective, it clearly did not take place in the eyes of the law.

So it’s not just an issue for police officers or nurses. I’m not defending the Times’ actions here, I’m saying that what you do on the internet is, in fact, rightly or wrongly, not private.