July 13, 2015 (RTHK) — Shareholder activist David Webb has launched an appeal against the privacy watchdog’s order to remove from his website names that appeared in three court judgments from 2000, 2001 and 2002.
The judiciary anonymised its judgments on these matrimonial cases ten years later – so those involved couldn’t be identified.
But they still could be identified on Webb’s site, which listed their names alongside a hyperlink to the court judgments. Webb argued that the data was collected at a time when it was publicly available, and so should continue to be easily accessible.
The administrative appeals board is now considering whether the Privacy Commissioner was right to order Webb to remove names. Webb warned that if the order was upheld it would have a ‘chilling’ effect on local media and could see media archives shut down.
