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Response to Media Enquiry or Report

Response to Media Enquiry or Report

Date: 25 October 2019

Response to the media enquiry on granting an interim injunction to prohibit the disclosure of personal data of police officers and their families

Thank you very much for your email enquiry. Our consolidated response from the perspective of personal data privacy follows:

  • The PCPD notes the High Court’s judgment of granting an interim injunction to, among others, prohibit the disclosure of personal data of police officers and their families. The PCPD would not comment on the interim injunction order.

Overall Situation on Doxxing:

  • The office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) received the first doxxing and cyberbullying case on 14 June. As at noon 25 October 2019, the PCPD received and proactively found 2,706 related cases, in which 2,378 cases were complaints and proactively found by the PCPD, while 328 cases were enquiries. Totally 13 online social platforms and discussion forums, and 2,165web links were involved. Of those 2,378 complaints and proactively found cases, 29% were related to police officers and their families.

PCPD’s Follow-up Actions

  • As at noon 25 October, the PCPD has written to the related 13 platforms 95 times to urge them to remove a total of 1,639 web links and to post warnings that netizens who engage in doxxing and cyberbullying may commit a serious offence under section 64 of PDPO, of which 647 web links (representing about 39%) have already been removed. For those links that have not been removed, the PCPD would continue to urge the related platforms to remove them and would continue to monitor the platforms.
  • The PCPD has also urged all the platforms concerned to provide registration information or IP addresses of the netizens who uploaded the relevant doxxing posts. However, none of the platforms has responded to the PCPD.
  • If those platforms still do not provide information to the PCPD, the PCPD will consider further actions (including summons) in an attempt to get from the platforms registration information or IP addresses of the netizens who uploaded the doxxing posts, to facilitate the PCPD’s investigation.
  • As the doxxing cases involved unlawful purposes of bullying, incitement and intimidation, and consent of the persons concerned was not obtained, it is certainly unfair and illegal, and has caused psychological harm tothe data subjects. Hence, if, after preliminary investigation, the PCPD considers that persons engaging in such acts may have contravened section 64 of PDPO, the PCPD would refer the cases to the Police for criminal investigation.
  • As at noon 25 October, the PCPD has referred 1,297 cases of this nature to the Police for criminal investigation and for consideration for prosecution.
  • The consequences of contravention of section 64 of PDPO are serious. The maximum penalty is a fine of HK$1,000,000 and an imprisonment for 5 years.