Privacy Watchdog Sets Up Doxxing Hotline

The privacy watchdog on Thursday launched a hotline dedicated for complaints and enquiries about doxxing.

The problem was rife in 2019 amid the social unrest, with the Privacy Commission saying most of the cases that came to its attention involved police officers and their families.

The watchdog dealt with 1,198 doxxing cases in 2020, a drop of 76 percent compared with the year before.

Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung said while the problem has eased, the victims of doxxing need as much help as possible.

"I don't think we should tolerate any doxxing cases.... I don't think we should ignore that we still have around one thousand doxxing cases," she told a press conference.

Chung said a survey the watchdog conducted last year showed suggested that 70 percent of people support legal changes to empower the commission to conduct criminal investigations and launch prosecutions over the unauthorised sharing of personal information, as well for the watchdog to be given the power to require websites and social media to remove doxxing content.

The commissioner also said that government departments should improve transparency regarding the limits of using personal data available in public registries, with regards to media searches for news reporting.

The comment comes after police charged RTHK investigative journalist Bao Choy with making false statements in relation to car licence plate searches aimed at finding the perpetrators of the Yuen Long mob attacks on July 21, 2019.

"The overall principle, which I advocate, is transparency. You should let people know the purpose of the register in question. You should let people know the available options, so that the searcher would not commit an offence unintentionally," Chung said.

The privacy chief said she doesn't think the methods available for the media to conduct searches have been limited by the authorities.

She said that while personal data in the public domain should be subject to privacy laws, the authorities should strike a proper balance between protecting the information in the registries and the media's right to know.