Peter A Clarke

On 17 September 2019 the Sun published a story about the murder suicide of Ben Stokes mother’s ex husband 31 years previously in New Zealand.  The story is no longer available on line.  The murder was of his mother’s two children. This tragic event occurred before Ben Stokes, a prominent English cricketer, was born.  At the time Ben Stokes reacted furiously to the story describing it as disgusting and immoral.  The Guardian ran a detailed piece with Ben Stokes attacks ‘despicable’ Sun story about family tragedy.  The next month Ben Stokes and his mother, Deborah, issued proceeding in the UK Court of Chancery.  The Particulars of Claim was served on 22 January 2020 with the Defence filed on 16 April 2020. 

The nub of the defence was that, first, the story about the murders were covered by the New Zealand media and, secondly, the Sun obtained an on the record interview with the family and had approached Ben Stokes for comment.

At the time, and subsequently, there was a lively debate about whether the report was one of free expression and/or a legitimate story to report versus privacy.  On 18 September 2019 the independent came out in support of the Sun.  At the time the Conversation in Ben Stokes v The Sun: gross intrusion or simple reportage? How media privacy law works highlighted some of the issues, such whether a privacy claim can be brought when the information is in the public domain, and whether a claim can be made by a person when it relates to inter related parties. 

There was no trial on the merits.  The Sun and Stokes settled on favourable terms to Stokes. The Stokes’ solicitors released a statement confirming Read the rest of this entry »

Poly Network a finance platform based in China which specialises in cryptocurrency transfers on the Binance, Ethereum and Polygon blockchain = has lost $600 million worth of crypto currency to a data breach.  The hacker exploited a vulnerability in the _executeCrossChainTx function between contract calls and was able to pass in data to modify the keeper of the EthCrossChainData contrac.  That let the intruder to declare themselves as the owner of any funds processed through the platform. Clever.  It also shows that coding errors can be fatal and part of cyber security should be to take steps to test and review coding.

Using repeated calls to the attacked contract, the hacker was able to exfiltrate funds from the Poly Network and then transfer them Read the rest of this entry »

Zoom has reached a $85 million settlement arising out of a lawsuit, IN RE: ZOOM VIDEO COMMUNICATIONS, INC. PRIVACY LITIGATION (5:20-cv-02155),  which claimed its violated its clients’ privacy rights by sharing personal data with Facebook, Google and Linked In.  The claim also alleged that Zoom’s security practices were unsatisfactory as they let hackers zoom meetings.  That practice has become so notorious that it has a term, zoom bombing. There has been extensive coverage with reports it itnews,  abc, BBC.   The Reuters coverage provides Read the rest of this entry »