Source: Hong Kong Government special administrative region
The following is issued on behalf of the Law Reform Commission:
The Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong (LRC) today (January 9) published a report on Cyber-Dependent Crimes and Jurisdictional Issues, recommending the introduction of a new piece of bespoke legislation on cybercrime to cover five types of cyber-dependent crimes, i.e. crimes that can be committed only through the use of information and communications technology devices, where such devices are both the tool for committing the crimes and the target of the crimes. The report represents the first part of the LRC’s study on cybercrime on which the LRC’s Cybercrime Sub-committee issued a consultation paper in July 2022.
Some of the main final recommendations in the report are:
(i) Unauthorised access to program or data without lawful authority should be a summary offence (Access Offence). The defendant’s knowledge that the access is unauthorised is one of the key mental elements of this offence. An aggravated form of the offence arises if the unauthorised access is accompanied by an intent to carry out further criminal activity. Apart from a general defence of reasonable excuse, specific defences are recommended to permit unauthorised access made for a range of specific purposes, including cybersecurity purposes, the protection of the interests of vulnerable persons (i.e. children under 16 and mentally incapacitated persons), as well as genuine educational, scientific and research purposes.
(vi) As the severity of the harm caused by cybercrime has a wide range, each of the five proposed cyber-dependent offences has two maximum sentences in general, one applicable to summary convictions (two years’ imprisonment) and the other to convictions on indictment (14 years’ imprisonment). An exception is the aggravated form of the Interference Offences involving a danger to life (e.g. interference with a railway signal system). The proposed maximum penalty for it is life imprisonment, which is consistent with that of the aggravated offence of criminal damage already prescribed under the current CO.