Star 'powerless' over caress tape

Pop star Aaron Kwok Fu-shing may be powerless to halt publication in Hong Kong of a secretly filmed video of him caressing a woman in a Sydney hotel room.

And a civil injunction to bar the press from printing stills from the footage was equally difficult, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data said yesterday.

Kwok was filmed in the hotel room with the woman, believed to be aged 23 or 24, in early April.

It is alleged the woman's boyfriend, 'Mr L', filmed the pair, then offered the footage to two newspapers for A$20,000 (HK$100,000) on August 26 and 31.

A spokeswoman for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said the Privacy (Data Protection) Ordinance only governed the collection of data within Hong Kong.

'The point is that the collection of the personal data was not within Hong Kong, therefore Mr Kwok cannot seek legal redress this way,' she said.