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Legal
Sue-the-fans lawyer fined just a grand over data spill
By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 11 May 2011
Andrew Crossley has been fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office in relation to that mega data-spill that occurred from his former company ACS:Law’s servers, which revealed personal details about over 6000 suspected file-sharers. Though the fine is considerably less than most people expected – a mere £1000.
As previously reported, ACS:Law, which specialised in anti-file-sharing litigation, accidentally published private data about the people they were going after when their servers were targeted by a Distributed Denial Of Service attack by those who opposed the law firm’s tactics.
Experts say that ACS:Law could have expected a fine of up to £200,000 for the data-spill, given that the ICO’s investigation showed Crossley had taken no professional advice when setting up his server, had no firewall and was relying on a web package designed for domestic use. However the much lower fine was applied because ACS:Law no longer exists and its owner, Crossley, seemingly pleaded poverty. Well, pleaded not having much money.
Torrentfreak quotes Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, who was very critical of ACS:Law’s woeful IT systems, as saying: “Penalties are a tool for achieving compliance with the law and, as set out in our criteria, we take people’s circumstances and their ability to pay into account”.
Some doubt that Crossley is really so broke that he couldn’t afford a fine more substantial than a grand. Torrentfreak notes that his claims late last year to be running a successful busy legal business, while PC Pro magazine has reportedly asked the ICO how they verified Crossley’s “circumstances”.
That said, given the once bullish legal man was basically portrayed as an incompetent fool in court, while his business went crashing under, some might think Crossley has suffered enough. Though those whose private data was made public via his incompetence, and those who were targeted by his company’s questionable legal letters and paid up, might disagree.
