Hong Kong’s data privacy pioneer lowers his guard

In 1996 he became the city’s first privacy commissioner, now Stephen Lau reflects on how data protection has changed over the years and the biggest challenges that lie ahead

Reading Time:5 minutes

Stephen Lau served as Hong Kong’s first Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data from 1996 to 2001. Photo: K. Y. Cheng

Published: 11:00am, 5 Nov 2016Updated: 11:00am, 5 Nov 2016

In today’s fast-moving digital environment, it’s hard to imagine a time when data privacy wasn’t a hot topic issue.

Yet that was the case when Stephen Lau Ka-men stepped into his role as Hong Kong’s first Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data from 1996 to 2001, a period when the city was just being introduced to the importance of online privacy and the protection of personal information.

“It was a really new concept. The law was written in such a way to promote the awareness of personal data privacy,” said Lau, who is now 72 and serving as a senior adviser at PricewaterhouseCooper’s Consulting and personal data and privacy adviser for the B4B Big Data for Business Challenge.

“It [was only] in the last few years that they amended the law and made the penalties harsher ... actually prosecuting individuals and organisations that have breached the law.”

With the advent of big data, social media, mobile and other technological advancements, the protection of personal data has become a crucial yet challenging task in Hong Kong. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data received a record number of complaints last year, with the majority related to the collection and use of personal data. A total of 1,971 complaints were filed, about 16 per cent more than in 2014, and 322 were about direct marketing.