Anti-Occupy hotline for spying on student strikes may be illegal, says privacy chief

People who call a hotline to inform on pro-democracy students planning class boycotts risk falling foul of the law, the head of the privacy watchdog said yesterday.

Pro-democracy groups, teachers and students had raised privacy concerns over the hotline, created by the Beijing-loyalist Alliance for Peace and Democracy.

The line was intended to collect reports of secondary school pupils who were planning to join a class boycott starting on September 22 and went live on Monday, but has since been suspended after a flood of prank calls. The alliance announced last night that the prank calls, which it termed "malicious damage", had been reported to police.

Privacy Commissioner Allan Chiang Yam-wang told a radio programme yesterday that anyone who disclosed pupils' personal information - including their names, schools or what class they were in - without the pupils' permission could breach the Privacy Ordinance. "Such information is personal information because you can identify a person with it," Chiang said. "The whistle-blowers need to be cautious."

Pupils who suspect they have been reported to the alliance had the right to ask whether their information was held in its database. The alliance must respond within 40 days. An alliance spokesman said it had taken legal advice before launching the hotline.