Cold-callers could be made criminals, but they won’t be caught, Hong Kong commerce minister says
Collecting evidence to prosecute those responsible for unwanted telemarketing calls would be fraught with difficulty, Greg So says
Difficulties collecting evidence would make it hard to prosecute cold-callers even if the government were to criminalise the practice, Hong Kong commerce minister Greg So Kam-leung said on Friday.
Those options were telemarketing firms improving self-regulation; promoting call-filtering apps for smartphones; and establishing a statutory “do not call” register.
Officials said telemarketers could be subject to either civil or criminal sanctions if they continued to call numbers listed on such a register by people who did not want to be disturbed.
Speaking on a radio programme on Friday morning, So said he was open to those options and that all three could be implemented at the same time if there was public support. But he said it would be difficult to bring telemarketers to court as some could be based overseas.
