Report on Activities - Promotion and Public Education

In the year under review, the PCPD successfully built on its foundation in raising awareness of the issues of personal data privacy through promotion and public education.

Highlights of the year were the Privacy Web-site Design Competition for Youngsters and the Summer Consumer Road-shows. Both activities received an overwhelming community support and enabled the public to have a better understanding of the interpretation and application of the PD(P)O, as well as their personal data privacy rights.

Privacy Web-site Design Competition for Youngsters

First prize winner: The Delia Memorial School (Broadway)

Jointly organized by the PCPD and the Education Department, the Competition aimed at raising young people's awareness of the risks of privacy intrusion when using the Internet. It also highlighted the importance of adopting precautionary measures to safeguard data privacy when obtaining and exchanging information in the cyber world.

The competition received enthusiastic support from Hong Kong's secondary schools. A total of 127 entries by 342 participants from 80 schools were submitted. A team of thirteen students from the Delia Memorial School (Broadway) won the first prize.

In addition, parents were invited to the prize presentation ceremony. During the ceremony, youth experts and other professionals were invited to speak on the topic of "How Can Parents Keep Their Children Safe on the Internet?" Among the speakers were Professor Wong Chung-kwong, Chairman of the Positive Living United Services and Sergent W C Leung of the Hong Kong Police.

Prize winners and invited guests at the cocktail reception of the prize presentation ceremony.	Sergeant W C Leung of the Hong Kong Police(left) and Professor Wong Chung Kwong, Chairman of Positive Living United Services (right) spoke at the "How Can Parents Keep Their Children Safe on the Internet?" seminar.

Summer Consumer Road-shows

A series of five consumer road-shows were staged at major shopping centres between July and August 2001. The road-show was a mini-exhibition with display information of the PCPD's messages on data privacy protection which were designed to arouse public awareness of personal data privacy rights as individuals. Interesting games on privacy protection concepts designed for parents and school children were also showed during the exhibition.

Publicity and media liaison

Media Liaison

In the reporting year, the PCPD held four press briefings to announce developments in the revisions to the Code of Practice on Consumer Credit Data and the draft Code of Practice on Monitoring and Personal Data Privacy at Work. In conjunction with the press briefings, further details on the privacy issues related to the two codes of practice were also published in press releases to the news media.

During the year under review, the PCPD responded to 927 requests for information from the media. These requests concerned issues of societal interest such as the Police's proposal to install closed circuit television systems in public places and the disclosure of personal data in marriage notices at the Marriage Registry.