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Response to Media Enquiry or Report

Response to Media Enquiry or Report

Date: 8 February 2018

Responses to Media Enquiry on The Right to be Forgotten



Thank you for your enquiry and our office’s responses are as follows:
 
  • In light of the implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 and the effect of the GDPR to Hong Kong businesses, the office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Hong Kong (PCPD) has conducted a comparative study between the GDPR and the Personal Data Privacy Ordinance (PDPO) with the aim of assisting Hong Kong businesses to get a better understanding of the GDPR and assessing whether the PDPO should be reviewed to catch up with international data protection standards:
 
  • One of the preliminary observations on the key impact of the EU GDPR is the enhanced right to erasure (also known as the “right to be forgotten”). GDPR gives an individual a right to require businesses to delete his personal data without undue delay under specified circumstances.  The right to erasure also imposes an obligation upon a data controller, that makes public disclosure of personal data (e.g. disclosure on the Internet) to take reasonable steps (taking account of available technology and implementation cost), to inform other relevant controllers about the data subject’s request of erasure of any links or copy of the data. [Art 17]
 
  • However, the PDPO does not explicitly provide an individual with the “right to be forgotten”. In Hong Kong, the PDPO imposes an obligation on a data user to erase personal data as more specifically spelt out in Data Protection Principle (DPP) 2(2) in Schedule 1 of the PDPO and section 26:
 
  • All data users must take all practicable steps to ensure personal data is not kept longer than is necessary to fulfil the purpose for which it is (or is to be) used; and
 
  • Data users must take practicable steps to erase the personal data held by them where it is no longer required unless the erasure is prohibited by any law or it is against the public interest to erase the data. 
 
  • The Privacy Commissioner has issued the Guidance on Personal Data Erasure and Anonymisation to provide practical advice to data users as to when personal data should be erased, as well as how personal data may be permanently erased by means of digital deletion and / or physical destruction.
 
  • The Privacy Commissioner also notices that there were requests for introducing the specific “right to be forgotten” into Hong Kong. The PCPD will keep abreast of the global personal data privacy development, and assess whether there is a pressing need for any reform in personal data law with a view to striking the proper balance between data privacy protection and other rights and interests, including the free flow of information, freedom of expression and of the press.

(The information can be attributed to the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, Mr Stephen Kai-yi Wong)