High Court to rule in Dec on legality of ‘restrictive’ rules governing media’s access to Hong Kong’s vehicle registry
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong’s High Court will determine in three months whether it was unlawful for the government to impose new rules on the media’s access to the city’s vehicle registry. The rules were deemed “restrictive” by a local press group.
The rules were tightened after the city’s apex court overturned journalist Bao Choy’s conviction last June over alleged false statements in her application to access the vehicle registry, saying it was made for the purpose of “genuine investigative journalism.”
Choy’s investigation centred around the Yuen Long attack on July 21, 2019, which marked a turning point during the protests and unrest in 2019. Over 100 rod-wielding men dressed in white stormed the Yuen Long MTR station and indiscriminately attacked passers-by, leaving dozens injured, while the police were accused of delaying their response.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association, represented by Senior Counsel Nigel Kat, submitted evidence showing that six applications by media outlets to access vehicle owners’ information were all refused under the department’s new regulations.
The union is seeking to challenge new rules for car plate searches on the grounds that they placed “disproportionate restrictions” on press freedom.
Newsworthiness
Addressing the evidence, Senior Counsel Jenkin Suen, one of the lawyers representing the Commissioner for Transport at the High Court on Tuesday, said that the applications were “neither recent nor urgent — not what we would consider to be newsworthy.”
News outlets including NowTV, Ming Pao, HK01, and Choy’s The Collective applied to search license plates shortly after the department changed its rules following the top court ruling, some of which involved the plates for vehicles owned by people involved in the 2019 Yuen Long mob attack, the court heard.
Suen said that the checks amounted simply to “academic” exercises aimed to test out the new system, and were not genuinely urgent. It would be “superfluous” for the court to consider those cases as they did not carry much jurisprudential value, he argued.
Senior Counsel Nigel Kat, addressing the rebuttal, said Suen’s point was “unsupported,” adding that the Yuen Long attack “is a matter of grave concern and it continues to be so.” Judge Russell Coleman also cast doubt on Suen’s submission, saying: “One might say its the job of the press to investigate whether something has been missed out.”
The judge also asked whether it was within the remit of the transport commissioner, supposedly tasked with simply being a gatekeeper against abuse of private information, to determine the importance of a car plate search for journalistic purposes.
Coleman made similar remarks regarding Kat’s suggestion that the Transport Department could add a separate option for journalistic purposes, saying that the commissioner may be “ill equipped” to decide whether something is needed for journalistic purposes
Press freedom
Kat on Thursday argued that the restrictions the new rules placed on journalistic work were contrary to common law and inconsistent with the top court’s decision, adding that policies under Hong Kong law should give effect to the right of the press and, thereby, the public’s right to know.
The regulations passed this January require journalists to submit a written application providing “adequate and detailed justifications” and supporting documents, while the applicant’s personal information would be disclosed to the vehicle owner if a certificate for viewing their records was granted.
The press group also submitted that Hong Kong’s privacy laws already had safeguards in place, and that journalists themselves were governed by industry standards and codes of conduct, Kat said.
The transport commissioner, represented by Senior Counsel Benjamin Yu, cited the top court’s judgement in submitting that it was effectively the gatekeeper of personal data on the register.
Yu argued that searching a car plate for the sale or purchase of a car was a proper purpose, whereas any search for a purpose “not directly related” to the use of a vehicle will be subject to scrutiny by the commissioner on a case-by-case basis, referring to the department’s new rules requiring a written application.
He compared the procedure to a visa application, whereby there would be “no scrutiny” for a tourist visa, while a work visa application would have to be accompanied with proof of a work contract.
Yu also submitted that the commissioner should exercise its role as a privacy gatekeeper by notifying any vehicle owner whose private information was solicited through a license plate check. But Kat argued that such a “tip-off” mechanism would create a chilling effect that would effectively weaken the media’s function as a public watchdog.
The court will hand down its verdict in December, Coleman said.
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