the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance, which has quite a limited scope. It stipulates six data protection principles which must be adhered to when dealing with personal data. Non-compliance with the principles is not a criminal offence but the party concerned may be served with an enforcement notice by the Privacy Commissioner. Non-compliance with an enforcement notice is punishable by a penalty of a fine at Level 5 and imprisonment for two years. The statute also creates a civil cause of action: an individual who suffers damage, including injured feeling, by reason of a contravention of the Ordinance in relation to his or her personal data may seek compensation from the data user concerned. However, the powers of law enforcement officers to conduct covert surveillance had been largely unchecked before 2005. The legal basis for covert surveillance first came under scrutiny in two criminal cases in the District Court in 2005. To plug the loophole, the Chief Executive promulgated the Law Enforcement (Covert Surveillance Procedure) Order in August 2005. Leung Kwok-hung and Koo Sze Yiu, two political activists who claimed they had probably been targets of covert surveillance, brought an action to challenge the constitutionality of the practice of covert surveillance. They succeeded at the Court of First Instance, which held that section 33 of the Telecommunication Ordinance and the Order were both unconstitutional. The former created the power to intercept communications without adequate safeguards against abuse. The later failed to comply with the procedural requirement in the Basic Law. The decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeal and the Court of Final Appeal. The Court of Final Appeal suspended for six months the declaration of invalidity of the unconstitutional provisions, so that new legislation can be introduced to regulate covert surveillance. The Interception of Communications and Surveillance Ordinance (Cap. 589) was passed by the Legislative Council on 6 August 2006 after a 58-hour debate. The law enforcement agencies have since been heavily criticised by the Honourable Mr Justice Woo V-P, the Commissioner on Interception of Communications and Surveillance. He remarked that some law enforcement officers were dishonest and unwilling to cooperate, behaved in an arrogant and presumptuous manner that was bordering on recalcitrance, and disobeyed orders by deleting relevant recordings of covert surveillance. It was also revealed that the government relied on a Canadian precedent to question the Commissioner's power to access covert surveillance recordings, and that a legislative