Today there was a report that a staff of the Hong Kong Immigration department accidentally allowed a highly sensitive confidential document to be uploaded onto the P2P network, Foxy. Reportedly, the documented uploaded to the P2P network is a document that contains personal information of individuals who were refused entry into Hong Kong, including the reasons and factors that lead to Hong Kong Immigration department to make such ruling.
It is also reported that the reason this staff of the Hong Kong Immigration took this document home onto his computer, is because he is a new staff and wanted to take some cases home to study the associate procedures.
The Hong Kong Immigration claims that they had since removed this confidential document from the staff’s computer and from the Foxy P2P network. They also claim that the said document can no longer be found on the Internet.
As many of you know, anything uploaded to the Internet will most likely be on the Net forever. Depending on the desirability of the file it could spread like wild fire on the Net. Allegedly this file was named “Private xxxxxx.doc”, which is quite attractive to common users of P2P networks.
One thing going for the Hong Kong Immigration department, is that the Foxy P2P network is popular among Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China citizens. Therefore, even a file with the word “Private” on it, may not draw too much attention among these users.
What I don’t understand is how can something like this happen in a city like Hong Kong. In most cases, Hong Kong is a modern cosmopolitan financial hub. Unlike its homeland, China, does have human rights, free of speech, free press, privacy policies, etc.
The privacy polices in Hong Kong is very lacking. If something is not done soon there may be more cases of confidential information leaked in wild or worst, more prevalent identify thefts.
I found out today, that Privacy laws in Hong Kong is extremely deficient. Although, there are laws to protect personal privacy of every citizens of Hong Kong. There are no laws to hold employees of institutions that manage and handle individual private data/information.
Without this accountability resulted in situations like the one today with the staff of the Hong Kong Immigration department. It is only a few days ago another case of personal data was leaked at the Hong Kong Hospital Authority. Similar case also happened with the Police department.
It is not that Hong Kong government offices are that much more vulnerable than most western countries/cities. There are similar cases in the United States and United Kingdom, both involved respective law enforcement departments.
So what so different in Hong Kong, I believe is the lack of accountability for the front-line handlers of these personal data of individuals. I do believe that it is not the lack of education or awareness of these front-line handlers. These same individuals if it comes to their own personal data, I believe they would be most diligent.
I think it is time for Hong Kong government to revamp the privacy laws, to ensure all parties in the chain-of-handlers are held accountable for the protection of this information they are appointed to handle.
Last evening (May 7) my hosting provider (HP) informed me that my site has been assigned a new IP address (May 7, 2008, 20:00). I then found out the IP address assigned is a dedicated IP for my site. This is so that my HP can isolate my site from the rest of the sites hosted by the server.
This all came about after I reported an issue with my ability to access services on my site/domain. As a result they pointed to my article on the Tibet issue and all other articles about China as the reason for their precautions.
They are worry that the China government’s firewall will block my site, hence, IP address. Causing all the sites and services on the said server to be block from access within the mainland China border. In directly, they also pointed out that I should have known better.
Not exactly sure if this is related, but my site and services since Thursday, May 8, 00:30 had been much faster than ever.
So if my sites is indeed blocked by the China government’s firewall, it will be unfortunate, and my friends in mainland China will have to go without the insights and articles I post to Vinko.Com, see all the photos I've taken in my photo albums, read the movie reviews before they go to the theatre, or shop at my online store, Vinko Treasures. But my site and services will be much faster.
The reaction to the Vodafone announcement that it has strike a deal with Apple to release the iPhone in 10 countries: Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey, was a mix bag of haters, be-littler and fan-boy.
The iPhone arriving in Asia had been anticipated for some time. The latest is definitely good news for all the countries mentioned in the Vodafone press release.
As we all know, Vodafone has one of the largest worldwide mobile network, and has 3G coverage in many of them.
Whether Vodafone waited for the 3G version of the iPhone before signing the deal with Apple, no one really knows for sure accept the parties in these talks. Whether Apple will retire the 2.5G version of the iPhone is also a speculation.
No matter which country you’re in, there are consumers who are happy with the speed and capabilities of a 2.5G network iPhone, and there are ones who need and want to pay for a 3G network iPhone. Ironically, the only exception being the United States, as 3G coverage is not that prevalent in North America.
Critics; particularly the Americans, should step back and recognize that Apple is aiming at the global mobile phone market and not just United States.
As for the original rumors about the iPhone’s Asian launch, the stages are:
India –> Australia/New Zealand –> Taiwan –> Hong Kong –> China.
Personally living in Hong Kong, should make me feel like a second class citizen; in this case 3rd or even 4th. But I am not disappointed, because like the thousands of iPhone users in Hong Kong, we are happily using our jailbroken/unlocked iPhone on every local carrier network since June 2007. Like most early adopters, will continue to do so until the 3G network version comes out, which I will upgrade to… anyone likes to buy an used iPhone?
Being a technologist I have the following principal and believe:
One needs to give a great deal of effort into the development of a technology, if one wants to ensure a good, effortless, intuitive interface for the end-user.
So when they say a technology is a metaphor for a real life process, I expect a lot from this technology. Case in point, the Mac OS interface.
This evening I saw the movie “Iron Man” at UA Cinema, Time Square, Hong Kong.
Presently surprised!
I am not sure it was the relatively low expectation I had for the movie or because it was good.
I had thought, that since it is the first time this comic book character, Iron Man, is made into a motion picture hero, the play-writes and director will have to spend a long time setting up the back story of the character, while serving up enough actions and story to keep the audience from falling behind. So the movie was going to be slow and boring.
This is definitely not the case. They balanced the above so well that you get just enough back story to understand and relates to the lead character, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and still enough twist and turn in the story to make you wanting more.
When I left the movie theater, that was exactly how I felt… I can’t wait for the sequel.
It has been a long time since Robert Downey Jr. been in the leading role of any movie. The most prominent role that I recall is in “U.S. Marshals (1998)” where he played the Special Agent John Royce opposite the actors Tommy Lee Jones and Wesley Snipes. I guess with Iron Man, Downey Jr. is announcing his return with a bang, as he had been busy. Later this year he will appear in another movie, “The Incredible Hulk (2008)”, staring Edward Norton
China’s going to launch their own mobile TV technology in time for the Olympic games’ opening ceremony on August 8, 2008.
Mobile TV standards have been largely incompatible, with systems in the North America, South America, South Korea, Italy and Japan. Now we see yet another incompatible system to be introduced in one of the largest potential user based. Shall we keep starting these standards wars? We saw the battle of BetaMAX and VHS. We recently saw the HD disk format war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
China had always wanted to come up with their own standards. They attempted to do so with WiFi, but failed drastically when the Chinese businesses complain that the China WiFi system would not be compatible with 802.11, hence forcing all Chinese businesses to equip their staff; who travels outside of China, with connected devices compatible with dual WiFi system.
Then China choose a HD TV standard that is incompatible with the rest of the world’s HD TV standard, but this time there are no Chinese businesses available to fight the decision for the consumer. So due to business survival, TV manufactures are making converter boxes that will sit between their HD TV sets and the signal coming at Chinese cities. For what have to be a patriotic decision, Hong Kong choose to go with the China standard rather than the standard that is use in majority of the countries outside of China.
Standards wars are never good for the ultimate consumers. I call for the technology decision makers and government officials, to consider the ultimate consumers in their decisions.
This Olympic torch relay around the world has now become such a controversy that the International Olympic Asscociation is considering terminating the relay. If this decision is final, it will become the first world record obtained by China in this year’s Olympic.
The people at “Torch Relay Beijing 2008” has created an animation to show their disguss of the recent events.
So far most sites who had talked about this or mentioned Tibet has been banned from China. I suppose mentioning these facts will also cause my site to be banned from China. After over 16 years of Internet presence for my site, I have finally dragged myself into a political topic that will cause me to loose the readership of fellow Chinese in China.
Hopefully, the well informed any Internet savy readers will find the usual techniques to circumvent the Chinese government’s censorship.
vinko
Today there was a report that a staff of the Hong Kong Immigration department accidentally allowed a highly sensitive confidential document to be uploaded onto the P2P network, Foxy. Reportedly, the documented uploaded to the P2P network is a document that contains personal information of individuals who were refused entry into Hong Kong, including the reasons and factors that lead to Hong Kong Immigration department to make such ruling.
Tags: accountability, enforcement, expose, government, Hong Kong, immigration, laws, leaked, policies, privacy 
The reaction to the Vodafone announcement that it has strike a deal with Apple to release the iPhone in 10 countries: Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey, was a mix bag of haters, be-littler and fan-boy.
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