Web blunder was partly our fault: complaints council The head of the independent police complaints watchdog admits its secretariat is partly to blame for releasing the confidential details of 20,000 people onto the internet in March. The watchdog's original report cited only EDPS Systems, the company contracted to maintain the database which held the names. '[The] secretariat is an immediate and proximate cause of this incident,' said Ronny Wong Fook-hum, the chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Council. He was speaking at a Legislative Council discussion on what follow-up action should be taken and who should be involved. Lawmakers said the government should be included because the secretariat was run and staffed by the government, a view Mr Wong shared. '[The] secretariat is a government department and the government should take responsibility for [following up] this incident,' he said. The leak saw the names, addresses, Hong Kong identity card numbers and criminal records of people who had made complaints against the police made available on the internet. Deputy security secretary Cheung Siu-hing said the government had already promised to be responsible for credit-monitoring measures to prevent the data from being misused. It would also act as defendant in any legal action taken over the leak. Mr Wong said at least seven people had said they might launch legal action, and the IPCC secretariat said it had received one claim. Some lawmakers renewed calls for an independent inquiry into the leak, with legislator Leung Kwok-hung saying the watchdog and EDPS Systems could settle the issue of responsibility out of court and keep the details private. But the government said the privacy commissioner's continuing inquiry was sufficient for now. EDPS president Ken Ng Kin agreed that an independent inquiry did not guarantee the truth would come out.
