My TakeFreedom of press calls for faster route to Transport Department data
Restrictions on journalists who access details of vehicle owners may have been supported by the Court of First Instance, but the case revealed greater room for official improvement
Journalists in Hong Kong, for many years, routinely accessed personal details of vehicle owners held on a government database as part of their newsroom investigations. There was no suggestion this carried legal risks.
That all changed in 2021 when reporter Bao Choy Yuk-ling was fined HK$6,000 for making false statements when obtaining such information for the making of an award-winning documentary. Her convictions were overturned by the Court of Final Appeal in 2023, which found the journalist to have been the victim of a “grave and substantial injustice.”
But the court, while ruling that access to the database for serious investigative journalism was permitted, also called for reform to ensure it was not used for gossip, sensationalism, stalking or marketing.
New arrangements introduced by the government in January 2024, imposing tight restrictions on the ability of journalists to obtain details of vehicle owners, were held by a court to be lawful last week.
The Court of First Instance judgment, in a case brought by the Hong Kong Journalists Association, concerned the first challenge to the new procedures. It raised valid questions about the nature of the scheme and the way in which it is implemented.
As the judge, Russell Coleman, said, the case is of public importance and will have a significant impact. It involves the balancing of two competing human rights, free expression and privacy. The question of where to draw the line between them arises in many areas of life.