Tech Risk & Security

The Hong Kong district court heard a computer crime case on 18th June 2007. An African visitor had rented a flat and stole credit card numbers from his neighbor using wireless sniffing, then he used the credit card information to do online shopping. The charge was brought under HK Crime Ordinance Chapter 200 s116 . More detailed information will be available when the judgment is posted online. The 23-year old defendant was caught since he had used his home address for online shopping and the police were able to trace the delivery records. His ignorance of fraud detection systems and traceability of online shopping transactions seems to suggest that he is not a professional criminal. There are lots of ways to use stolen credit card numbers, buying cash coupons and delivering to an unoccupied house's mail box are common. According to statistics , credit card fraudis increasing and costs 3 billion USD in 2006, up from 2.7 billion in 2005. Different measures (like adding chips or usi...

The legal battle on BitTorrent cases reached an end on 18 May 2007 and the full judgement released on Hong Kong Legal Information Institute On 12 Jan 2005, officers from HKSAR Custom Department raided thedefendant's (Mr. Chan) home after tracking his address from an online forum. Mr. Chan he had uploaded 3 .torrent files on 10 Jan 2005 and 11 Jan 2005 to the forum and these enabled BT users to download copies ofmovies. In first instance, Mr. Chan was charged by virtue of section118(1)(f) of the Copyright Ordinance, Cap 528 and of obtaining access to a computer with dishonest intent, contrary to section 161(1) (c) ofthe Crimes Ordinance, Cap 200. But in the final judgement in the Court of Final Appeal, the 5 judges unanimously dismissed Mr Chan appeal andhe was convicted of 118(1)(f) of the Copyright Ordinance only. This was a high profiled case and the HKSAR government launched propaganda on their determination on combating the copyright battle. Since charges was brought to the cou...

I joined a discussion forum oragnised by Legislator CK SIn on 26 Apr at HKPC where a group of industry leaders are invited to express their view on Hong Kong Government consultation paper on new copyright legislations. The speakers concentrated on two major themes: 1 Criminalisation of infringing downloading 2 Requiring ISP to keep IP-to-Physical Address records One important discussion item was that almost everyone acknowledged the fact that a viable business model is needed for substantial development of online contents. But when there is no widely adopted business model, legislations are considered necessary. PISA is monitoring these developments and will submit our views to the government.

For most of the telecom service (from dial-up, broadband, network TV), the services are regulated by country government. Consumers depend on the government to ensure proper operation of telecom services since these services affect a large scope of the society and the services are very technical. However, domain-name registrars are poorly regulated according Business-Week. Not that government-regulation must be good; it could be self-regulated (like the industry-associations). The current state of DNS is worrying. This phenomena is not unique in US. In HK, Hong Kong Internet Registration Corporation Limited is also a commercial organisation but the government sent one senior official to sit on its broad.