Police and Hospital Authority warned by watchdog over loss of private data
Watchdog orders force and Hospital Authority to improve procedures or risk prosecution after inquiry into lost notebooks and patient records
The privacy watchdog has slammed the police for losing notebooks containing personal information on 285 Hongkongers in 11 incidents between October 2011 and January this year.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner also criticised the Hospital Authority for negligence in the monitoring of a waste-disposal contractor which failed to destroy patients' data securely.
The commissioner issued enforcement notices to both organisations, setting out ways to improve their procedures. Failure to comply with such a notice is a criminal offence.
In one "extreme" case, a police officer - whose rank has not been revealed - inadvertently left a paper bag containing 17 notebooks on a bus on October 31 last year. The notebooks contained the names, addresses and identity card numbers of 41 people.
The commissioner, Allan Chiang Yam-wang, said the officer "blatantly failed to observe the requirements of the police orders" which require an officer to return his or her used notebook upon receiving a new one.
Chiang said the police lacked a comprehensive and effective supervision and monitoring system to safeguard documents containing personal data.
A requirement that supervising officers make checks when issuing new notebooks and allowing officers to retain used ones was not strictly enforced, the commissioner found. The officer still had notebooks dating back as far as 2007, the commissioner said.