Earlier, the Shatin Magistrates' Court issued the first criminalization verdict since the beginning. The defendant, Ho Mu-wah, published the information of his "ex-girlfriend" on different social platforms (mainly Telegram), including her name, contact number, address, etc., and even made it public Her husband - yes, he had a husband, so the defendant wrote in the fake IG that the victim was "an unfaithful wife who often spent the night at other people's homes" - and family information, which caused nuisance to the victim and those around her. . The defendant was eventually sentenced to eight months in prison. It is believed that it will be difficult for the defendant to find a clerical job using computers in the future as long as he has a relevant criminal record.

First, let’s explain what bottom-up means. Before the amendment of the Privacy Ordinance in October 2021, it was generally understood that only the disclosure of “information disclosed without the consent of the data provider” was a criminal offence. For example, a hospital nurse disclosed patient information (relevant cases are in Sentenced to a 240-hour social service order in February 2021), because the patient voluntarily provided the information for the doctor's diagnosis, and the malicious disclosure was not the original intention of the person who provided the information, so the discloser violated the law. Now that Section 64 of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance has been amended, the scope is much broader. As long as the person disclosing the information intends to cause the subject or his family to suffer specified harm, it is illegal. And compared with the penalty of the 240-hour community service order back then, the current penalty of eight months in prison for the crime of "dipping" seems quite severe.

Whether this kind of amendment is good or bad is a matter of opinion. Some people may think that this is a manifestation of the narrowing of freedom of speech due to the anti-amendment movement. However, as can be seen from the above cases, the extension of "base crime" is also true. Cracked down on some heinous behaviors. We occasionally receive inquiries for help in this situation. The dating platform I developed also occasionally encounters such malicious disclosure of personal information. In the past, it was really difficult to have a reasonable direction to deal with it. Now we can remind the victims. If the person considers calling the police, relevant cases can also serve as a deterrent.

However, the extensibility of this regulation can be very wide, and it remains to be seen how it will be implemented in practice. For example, some stores now post screenshots of criminals caught on CCTV and making excessive purchases as a warning to others. Will this also violate the crime of instigation? Or is it a reasonable excuse for me to just say that I posted the screenshot to prevent a crime from happening again and did not intend to cause specified harm? Or will the program "East x West x" currently promoted by a major TV station be guilty of prostitution? There may be many other situations and counterarguments like this. In any case, modern people do not pay as much attention to personal privacy as they did in the past. While enjoying freedom of speech, everyone should also be careful not to infringe on the privacy of others to avoid accidentally falling into the law.

If you have any legal questions, please send us a private message! We will try our best to give you a direction and hope to help you take the first step to solve the problem.