A former Hong Kong telecom worker was yesterday jailed for publishing personal details of police officers and their families during last year’s pro-democracy protests, the first such conviction linked to the political unrest.
Chan King-hei (陳景僖), 33, was sentenced to two years in jail after being convicted last month of unlawfully obtaining and disclosing personal data stored on computers at his former employer, Hong Kong Telecom.
Publishing personal details online — known as “doxing” — became a common tactic used by both sides of Hong Kong’s political divide during last year’s protests.
Police became a key target for protesters as clashes raged — especially after officers stopped wearing identification badges — while government loyalists have also doxed Beijing’s critics.
During their investigation, police discovered personal information, including ID card and telephone numbers, as well as residential addresses of officers and their families on Chan’s mobile phone.
They also found that he had downloaded files from his company’s computers. Some of the personal details were then shared on the encrypted messaging service Telegram — on a channel dedicated to exposing the personal details of police officers and pro-government figures, the court said.
Hong Kong was last year convulsed by seven consecutive months of protests calling for greater democratic freedoms and police accountability.
Backed by Beijing, the authorities refused concessions and more than 10,000 people were arrested. The courts are filled with prosecutions and Beijing imposed sweeping national security legislation in June.
The measures have snuffed out mass expressions of dissent, but the underlying causes of the unrest remain unaddressed.
A 25-year old immigration official is being prosecuted for allegedly using government computers to access the personal information of more than 220 individuals, including police officers, senior officials, judges and their family members.
A Web site called HK Leaks has also ramped up its doxxing of government critics, especially since the national security legislation was imposed. HK Leaks has so far posted the personal details of more than 2,000 people that it deems guilty of various “misdeeds” against China.
Registered on a Russian server, it is specifically designed to evade prosecution, experts have said.
“It is saddening that doxing acts often lead to cyberbullying or even criminal intimidation of the victims and their family members,” Hong Kong Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data Ada Chung (鍾麗玲) said following yesterday’s sentencing.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS