Pixellating easily findeable person's face - why?
Discussion
There is a case going on in Scotland at the moment where there is a famous person with loads of photos of them online (since they've been on telly for decades) who is accused of something.
What this person looks like is in no sense whatsoever a secret. Due to their fame there are loads of pics.
Also, there is absolutely no secret that this person is on trial for the thing that they are accused of. That is also well reported. With pictures of them with a pixellated face.
Because "for legal reasons" the media aren't allowed to print photos of them outside court unless they pixellate the face. But they can report this person is on trial. They can also report about this person for different reasons and then print their face.
For obvious reasons I don't want to discuss that case specifically. But when I saw this it was nuts to me and I don't think I've seen anything like this before. And it turns out these conditions have been ongoing for a couple of years. You can see articles from years before of this person pixellated in the face when discussing this case. But when discussing this person outside of the case, photographing them fine.
What could - hypothetically in a different case - the legal reasons for such restrictions be when what the person looks like is absolutely no secret at all? The only thing I can think of is that there is going to be some kind of in-court moment where they go "is the person who did this in the court now" or something like that? Is that some Scottish thing?
What this person looks like is in no sense whatsoever a secret. Due to their fame there are loads of pics.
Also, there is absolutely no secret that this person is on trial for the thing that they are accused of. That is also well reported. With pictures of them with a pixellated face.
Because "for legal reasons" the media aren't allowed to print photos of them outside court unless they pixellate the face. But they can report this person is on trial. They can also report about this person for different reasons and then print their face.
For obvious reasons I don't want to discuss that case specifically. But when I saw this it was nuts to me and I don't think I've seen anything like this before. And it turns out these conditions have been ongoing for a couple of years. You can see articles from years before of this person pixellated in the face when discussing this case. But when discussing this person outside of the case, photographing them fine.
What could - hypothetically in a different case - the legal reasons for such restrictions be when what the person looks like is absolutely no secret at all? The only thing I can think of is that there is going to be some kind of in-court moment where they go "is the person who did this in the court now" or something like that? Is that some Scottish thing?
LRDefender said:
Have you got a link to any of the articles please? 
Ha! Since this morning when I saw this they've literally unpixellated him - I assume because the restriction was crazy and the media have applied for it to be removed or something? I promise that earlier in the day he was pixellated. So here's a current version of the article with his face not pixellated: https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16060939/Gr...
But here's a different article (I can't get a historical version of the above article but you're just going to have to trust me) showing the restriction in full swing for an earlier court hearing of him, where the same issue applied at the time: https://archive.ph/LS1au
I also see that there was a mumsnet thread about this back in 2025: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5311700-what-le...
I'm not a lunatic I promise, it really really was pixellated earlier!
Edited by Somewhatfoolish on Tuesday 18th August 22:25
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