"Your honour there is no record of journalists being arrested and dissappeared that is entirely fictional. In fact I’d like to know there sources for that since even the nationalist papers are not claiming that since it is obviously ridiculous. Journalists have been charged with a prosecuted on privacy and doxing charges only and only if they have breached someone's privacy by publishing a home address or personal contact details that are not available publicly. That is an entirely reasonable rule for journalists to have to follow along with rules they cannot dox people as that can have significant safety and security implications for the individual victim of such a crime.Not only that we did repeal some of the laws on publication of public addresses and names of officials available on church sites since then.
We will continue to state freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences because it is true. As private run sporting organisations they can implement any policy they like in regards to entry and buying of tickets. Being allowed entry to sporting events is not a "right", there are several reasons you may not want them to such as if they have caused trouble at other events in the past , they have a criminal conviction that may lead you to believe they will and more reasons beside. They also have the right to access posts set to public to establish if they are known to have done hate speech according to their ticketing rules in the past , they do not have to allow entry and may check on people who are planning to attend their events in order to maintain a friendly civil atmosphere in the stadiums.
If the prosecutions argument run hooligans around Europe would have to be let into stadiums against and racial abuse , misogynistic abuse , homophobic and transphobic abuse would have to be allowed in stadiums again as associations couldn't stop their "freedom of speech" which the old anthem falls under in regards to their rules. The state has treated all equally under law thats why it doesn't prosecute homophobic speech with criminal charges nor anti-catholic speech as long as its not harassment. However we cannot force private organisations to accept this and cannot force society to interact , be friends or associate with those type of people , in fact doing so would be breaching citizens rights to choose who they associate with. There is also as stated before not a reasonable expectation of privacy at a football or shinty match or any public sporting event, if you are in public at a public event it is commonly accepted people can take photos and video including your face and of your behavior in order to report it, likewise associations under law in Strathae have the right to have investigators to do this in public matches as long as they do not film people at their homes which would be illegal without a warrant to do so which would typically only be granted if there was significant evidence of a crime in order to protect the privacy of home.
In terms of police involvement there is police involvement whereby teams selling tickets and the sports associations may check the police databases for criminal charges but this is in line with all know exceptions to privacy rules and is equivalent to a DBS check for working with children to ensure that public safety of all is protected.
The allegations of state sponsored surveillance are utterly untrue; the private investigators would be hired by a private organisation that is not run by the state and does not have state involvement. How can it be state sponsored if the state is not involved in the decision making , our sports associations are entirely independent so any decision they come to independently is nothing to do with the state nor do we have the right to intervene unless they breach a national law on a policy which they haven’t as far as we are aware. The same applies to ticket buying checks which again is a private organisation doing it and are only scraping from publicly available information on the web including posts set to public which again does not breach the Strathaen law in this instance while it does not breach freedom of movement because freedom of movement does not mean the right to attend any event or match , if you were to take this stance it would mean no one could ever remove a guest from a party or ban someone from a party or pub event because it would breach their “freedom of movement” which it obviously does not , they are organising and putting on the event as a private actor therefore they set the rules on who can or cannot attend and who can be in each stand. They also do have the right to send pictures , names and images of past trouble makers to foreign police and border agency authorities so they can act if they need to or at least know who to watch out for this can easily be justified by security needs. We do have working relationships with SASA but its much like normal state to football association relationships , we share data on convicted criminals with them if they request it and they can send details of those banned from the games to security organised for the game, these are pretty standard policies that almost ever sports association has.
Does the prosecution not understand the Catholics and protestants have a right to attend a football or shinty match without being harassed or constantly having to hear anti-Catholic and anti-prostestant lyrics aimed specifically at them.
