In Hong Kong, the fallout from the Octopus data privacy scandal continued to linger through the end of 2010, as the Office of the Privacy Commissioner released its report on the incident as well as a set of proposals for amendments to the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance. This was followed shortly thereafter by a government report on the extensive public consultation on the review of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, or PDPO.
While the Privacy Commissioners report neither shed any new light on the incident, nor actually called out any specific breach of the ordinance by Octopus (apart from a perhaps excessive collection of data), the government report on the other hand, at almost 200 pages long, proved a interesting reading. Covering both proposals for the ordinance that will be taken forward for further review as well as those that will not, it provided members of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (Legco) with some great ammunition for the lengthy debates that took place in public and behind closed doors through November and December. And there are clearly many views from the various political parties and from those members that occupy the functional constituency seats (like insurance for example) that could be impacted by any proposed changes.
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