Hong Kong privacy watchdog refers 600 cases of doxxing to police
- More than 70 per cent of cases involve police officers and their families, including threats against their children
- ‘It is absolutely horrendous and unacceptable’ privacy commissioner says
More than 600 cases of cyberbullying and leaked personal data received since extradition bill protests began in June have been handed to police for further investigation, Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog said on Wednesday.
The Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data (PCPD) said it had received 683 complaints of “doxxing”, the practice of posting a person’s private data online, and cyberbullying, as well as 85 inquiries as of Wednesday. It had transferred 608 cases to the police.
“The doxxing and leaks are large-scale and have started to form a trend, with some cases even involving threats and causing the victim psychological harm,” privacy commissioner Stephen Wong Kai-yi said. More than 70 per cent of the cases involved police officers and their families, including threats against their children, he said.
One example the PCPD displayed at a press conference on Wednesday included an image of a police officer with his child, captioned: “Get ready to pick up from school with a sack”.
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“It is absolutely horrendous and unacceptable, especially doxxing with criminal intimidation and incitement for people on the net to commit unlawful acts,” Wong said. However, he declined to say if the data leaks were politically motivated.
Throughout the past two months of protests against the now-abandoned extradition bill, government officials and police officers have been doxxed, with their personal information being posted to social media and printed on posters on “Lennon Walls”, the murals across the city made up of anti-government slogans and artworks.
The force said it had found more than 1,600 officers and their friends or family members had been doxxed between June and August.
Since July 2, police had arrested 15 men and four women aged between 16 and 40 in connection with the cases, charging them with a variety of crimes including releasing personal information without consent and criminal intimidation. All of the people arrested had been released on bail pending further investigation.
In July, the private data of high-ranking government officials were leaked, including those of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng Yeuk-wah, Commissioner of Police Stephen Lo Wai-chung and Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu.
The PCPD said it also received a tip-off about two online links to the personal data and pictures of more than 60 people, believed to be protesters, with a warning to employers not to hire them.
Other victims included government officials, medical personnel, family members of police officers and “well-known public figures”, although Wong declined to disclose who the public figures were.
The cases were referred to police because the PCPD lacked the authority to prosecute cases, Wong said. “All the cases referred to police involve all types of victim, not just the police,” he said.
The leaks were spread across eight social media platforms including Hong Kong’s reddit-like forums LIHKG and HKGolden, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram, Tumblr and Doxbin. Among those, Telegram has been widely used by extradition bill protesters to organise and share information.
The privacy watchdog said it had contacted the platforms to remove the 872 links to leaked data, although only 474 of them were eventually removed. Wong said the PCPD had also contacted foreign law enforcement authorities to help deal with posts hosted on foreign servers.
