Crisis of personal data protection during the construction of E-government: reaction and limits of Hong Kong privacy laws

The government of Hong Kong has achieved remarkable staged results according to its comprehensive E-government blueprint. At the same time, it is its statutory responsibility to protect privacy and personal data. However, there has been a succession of incidents of unauthorized leakage onto the Internet of personal data held by the agencies of Hong Kong government since 2006. These incidents occurred during the implementation of E-government, and aroused the public's deep concern of their privacy rights impacted by the Internet and the security of their personal data held by government agencies. This paper studies two typical cases of personal data leakage, one arising during the internal outsourcing process, the other occurring in external online service to citizens. It analyzes how the existing privacy regime addresses privacy intrusion and whether the redress is sufficient, before exploring the defects of the remedy system as well as the ways of improving legal protection of personal data within E-government environment.