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Lawmakers yesterday continued to pick their way through the basics of the covert surveillance bill, questioning the definition of words such as 'judicial', 'postal' and even 'install'.

At one point, Liberal Party legislator Selina Chow Liang Shuk-yee  expressed exasperation at the number of such questions Democrat James To Kun-sun  was raising, urging the bills committee to move down the bill into the context of how words were used instead of bickering over basic definitions.

But Mr To retorted: 'Every word may be controversial. If the bill is not well drawn up, the scope can be extremely broad.'

The bill must be passed by August, before a grace period granted to the government by High Court judge Mr Justice Michael Hartmann  expires.

However, the bills committee is still working on clause two of the 65-clause bill - the 'interpretation' clause.

Bills committee chairwoman Miriam Lau Kin-yee  struggled to keep order at the meeting last night - the second gathering of the committee in one day.

But there was some progress. The government agreed to move an amendment, replacing the terms 'judicial authorisation' with 'judge's authorisation' to remove doubt about whether 'judicial' indeed means 'judge's'.

The proposed bill regulates the use of covert surveillance and bugging by law enforcement agents, but restricts the definition of such surveillance to activities involving the use of devices.

Lawmakers also questioned whether the bill, in regulating 'postal interception', would cover courier services and office messenger services as well as Hong Kong's official postal service.

Permanent Secretary for Security Stanley Ying Tu-hong  said 'postal interception' did not include commercial courier or messenger services.

'For commercial couriers, we will have to use overt rather than covert measures,' he said, adding that law enforcement agents would have to obtain a traditional search warrant to intercept packages and letters sent through such services.



Lawmakers work way through surveillance bill, word by word