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There is an interesting article in today’s Daily Telegraph suggesting that the latest public inquiry into allegations that the UK Government allegedly knew about and/or sanctioned torture of prisoners held without trial under the Terrorism Act.

In essence, the Telegraph columnist says this is a waste of public money. Maybe the writer is getting older and more cynical but I do completely agree. is it just me oir are we having an ever increasing number of these inquiries which apear to neither solve the issue which prompted the inquiry or to bring anybody to book for wrongdoing ?

Frankly, this is getting very irritating. Cust are being made all over the place, including to vital legal aid services and in many other areas. The Government’s response to any criticism that has “legs” is to call an inquiry, hand it over to a Senior Judge and then let a year pass whilst he or she speaks to witnesses and then produces a 1,000 page report, all at a cost of millions for each one.

I suggest that we stop these inquiries and start holding people accountable, that’s what the justice system is there for ! But hey, what do I know ?

What is the difference between an indemnity and a guarantee ?

• An indemnity constitutes a primary liability.
• A guarantee constitutes a secondary liability.
• A guarantee must be in writing or evidenced in writing and signed by the guarantor or its agent
• There are no formal requirements for a valid indemnity.
• The secondary nature of the liability under a guarantee means that if the tenant’s covenants are void or unenforceable, then the guarantee will also be unenforceable and if the tenant is discharged from its liability (other than by disclaimer where the guarantor’s liability continues), the liability of the guarantor will also be discharged.
• The primary nature of the liability under an indemnity means that, if the underlying transaction is set aside for any reason or the main debtor is discharged from their liability, the indemnity will remain valid.

For additional commercial law advice or specific advice on issues regarding liability for guarantees or indemnities or joint and several liability, solicitors in London can guide and assist.

Data Protection – Have you Protected your Business ?

Data Protection Regulations affect every business and their handling of all private data which comes their way. Many business owners are not aware of these effects, even though the consequences of not following the regulations can damage their business.

This is a matter that every business needs to take seriously, especially after the recent fines imposed by the Information Commissioner on those who breached the regulations.

Recent Fines Ordered by the Commissioner:

This is the first time that the Commissioner has imposed monetary penalties for breaching the Data Protection Act 1998, intending for this to send a strong message to businesses that they must take data protection seriously.

The two cases were:

1. Employees in the Hertfordshire County Council childcare litigation unit faxed highly sensitive personal information to a member of the public by mistake. It was found by the Commissioner that the Council failed to take sufficient steps to reduce further similar breaches. The Council was fined £100,000.

1. An Employment Services company lost an unencrypted laptop containing personal data relating to 24,000 people who used community legal advice centres in Leicester and Hull. The laptop was taken by an employee working from home and was stolen shortly afterwards where they attempted, unsuccessfully, to access the information stored on the computer. The Commissioner fined the company £60,000.

Powers of the Commissioner to Impose Penalties:

If your business seriously breaches the principles set out in the Data Protection Act 1998 and accompanying regulations, and this breach is likely to cause substantial damage or distress, the Information Commissioner could fine you up to £500,000.

To make such a finding against you, the Commissioner must be satisfied that you knew or ought to have known about the breach and that it would cause such damage and distress, yet you failed to take any reasonable action to prevent it.

Action you can Take:

To protect yourself from a breach, data loss or leak of confidential information, or to mitigate the potential for a fine or other legal problem, it is advisable that you take legal advice and specialist IT security advice on prevention.

When moving house take on board the fraud risk

There are so many things to do when moving home, so much excitement and so much stress, that it can be very easy to overlook some fundamentally important practicalities. Overlooking these things can prove expensive however, as a  recent security survey from the Royal Mail indicates.

Some stats from the Royal Mail survey :-

• Headline figure of 23% of house movers at risk of identity fraud
• 450,000  at risk of identity fraud every year by delaying in advising suppliers of the change of address.
• Millions of items of mail containing highly confidential information get delivered to old addresses
• 23% fail to advise credit card companies of change of address
• 21% % fail to advise the Local Council of change of address
• 20% % fail to advise insurers  of change of address
• 19% % fail to advise their bank  of change of address

Protecting Your Domain Names

Imagine that you have an transactional website of yours and suddenly the number of visitors on your website dip down to 2 ,1 and then 0.

Take this scenario of losing control of your domain names, Imagine someone intentionally gained access to your account and with your domain registrar details they can hijack your domain name , redirecting your website to some other site (example porn site, poker site or their own website) and what if they will transfer the domain under their name and then you will have to start a legal battle which is a very messy process in the internet industry.

Usually when your domain expires you receive notifications from the registrar to renew it few months before the expiry of your domain name. But if you thinking that Oh ill do it tomorrow or 1 month before then its risky from Domain Squatters who always sit and wait for this moment.

There are few important points which you need to take into consideration while protecting your domain name.

1.      When you register a fresh domain always make sure that you register it for 2 years minimum and maximum 10 years this way you save a lot of time of yours. Most of the domain users asks this question from me that we don have enough money at the start to buy it for 10 years. The solution is quite simple whenever you register your domain name for the first time make sure that you set up a direct debit this way your domain will automatically get renewed whenever it will get expired.

2.      Whois Privacy – This is service which is mostly provided by all domain providers its normally free with all UK domain names. This service is for hiding your personal details as in terms of the owner details. Lets say for instance on whois.com anyone can access your domain details with your email address itself. So what if your email account gets hacked ??? This is a serious problems and that’s why domain privacy should be used. It doesn’t cost fortune, so its better to use it.

3.      Registrar lock – most of the domain providers provide the registrar lock utility whoch helps the domain owners to prevent their domain getting illegally transferred to someone else.

4.      Last but a very important thing EPP which stands for Extensible provisioning protocol which acts as a second shielded protection for your domain name, if supported by your domain registrar it enables you to select a UAIC unique authorization information code for each domain, which must be given to the new registrar  before the domain can be transferred.

We hope you have found this brief summary useful. Blackhawk Investigations in London would be happy to assist with any other corporate investigation or computer forensics issues.

Changes in legal costs and no win no fee claims

Last week the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) clarified the Government’s intentions reforming civil litigation costs. Legal costs and success fee being paid by the losing party, enabling a growth in no win no fee litigation has proved popular with both claimants, for obvious reasons, and also their lawyers. It has certainly increased access to justice. However, on the downside, with insurers generally footing the bill of such claims, insurance premiums have risen for all, and the courts have been very busy, to an extent at taxpayer’s costs.

In terms of pure statistics, lawyers have done well out of the current system. In 1999, claimant solicitors’ costs were equivalent to 56% of the damages agreed in personal injury cases. By 2010, solicitors’ costs had risen to 142% of received damages.

The reforms by the Government will now strip away the entitlement to success fees and cap the claimant’s solicitors costs at a lower percentage of the overall sum recovered. The trouble with this is that there are many claims for injuries where damages (generally low under the English legal system, in contrast to what many people think) are less than £1,500.00 which means that lawyers may think twice about taking on such cases, however legitimate. This will result, in turn, in reduced access to justice.

So, it remains to be seen how things will work out in practice, but it may well be that the proposed reforms prove somewhat unbalanced and will end up representing one Government simply reversing the previous rules, rather than a  more balanced approach.