Applause Store Productions Ltd v Raphael [2008] EWHC 1781 QBD

The Claimants alleged that the defendant set up a Facebook profile in the name of the second claimant containing personal information about him and a group page alleging tha the claimant owed a substantial amount of money and were not to be trusted in the financial conduct of their business. The defendant, a former friend of the second claimant before they fell out, admitted using Facebook but denied that he was responsible for setting up the profile and group. At trial Richard Parkes Q.C. (sitting as a deputy High Court judge without a jury) held that the defendant was responsible for setting up and, hence publishing the profile and the group page. The extent of the publication was estimated at less that 100 people. The Deputy Judge awarded the second claimant, UK Stg 15,000 damages for libel: and the first claimant UK Stg 5,000 damages for libel. He also awarded the second claimant UK Stg 2,000 for breaches of his privacy.

UK Blogger Case:

The Author of a Blog v Times Newspapers Limited QB [2009] EWHC 1358 – Eady J Ruling: The author of the NightJack police blog, which has revealed details of cases and engaged in criticism of ministers potentially in breach of police rules, claimed that The Times should be stopped from naming him. He said that the newspaper owed a duty to keep the information confidential, and that he had a right to privacy.

Newsprint v Web:

Flood v Times Newspapers Ltd. [2009] EWHC 2375 (QB) – 2nd October 2009.

A newspaper which continued to publish a defamatory article on its website after its subject was cleared in an investigation lost its right to claim a special journalistic defence against libel, the High Court has said.

The ruling makes it clear that while responsible journalism is given some libel protection, that protection can evaporate if the crucial facts of the case change. Web archives of stories must change to reflect this, the ruling said.

From a security point of view, there are numerous concerns but we’ve seen how powerful and useful social networking applications/sites can be with so many companies using Facebook, Twitter etc to create or improve their business (e.g. Komplett are incredibly helpful on Twitter). Twitter is also brilliant at diseminating or sharing information – ‘viral’ as the experts would say! Possibly too much information (as you recently posted).

On the security side of things, Twitter has been the target of several high-profile attacks, most recently by the Iranian Cyber Army in reaction to Twitter being used extensively by the Iranian pro-democracy groups in 2009. Facebook has had countless worms and nefarious applications/widgets written for it.

I know of several companies where all job applicants have their Facebook/Bebo/MySpace/Twitter pages reviewed and many are rejected immediately because of the inappropriate pictures. Is that invasion of privacy or is the best way to treat information that you want to keep private simply “not to upload it to social network sites”? Quite often the only people in an organisation with Internet access to Social Networking sites are those in HR or Legal

Interestingly, there was a Christmas Security Challenge on http://www.ethicalhacker.net where the primary purpose of the attack was to abuse the trust relationship between friends to view supposedly private items.

I think in the end, business and communication will win and security/privacy will be in the background. People want to get back in touch, communicate, trade, advertise their business and for most, security/privacy is not their primary thought with many believing it will never happen to them. At the end of the day, money talks and easy access or less restrictive controls will be a greater facilitator of business.

Regarding ‘libel’, I’d never really thought about that! I’m sure there’ll be a landmark case soon where the privacy advocates will be up in arms but will they win?

I’ve no idea if that made sense……