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A Customs taskforce set up last year to battle Internet piracy has failed to secure any prosecutions. The problem was due to the difficulty in producing evidence admissible in court, a Customs official says.

The team, established in December by the Customs and Excise Department, has investigated five cases and arrested 12 people in connection with the sale of pirated products over the Internet.

However, none have been prosecuted because most of the evidence collected is in digital form, making it difficult to submit as evidence in court.

Strict forensic examination of electronic data was required before this could be accepted in court, says Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Excise Vincent Poon Yeung-kwong.

Evidence in two of the five cases is being examined by police and Customs forensic experts, he says.

"In a cyber-world, it is difficult to trace who is responsible for the crime. And because the evidence is in abstract and digital form, it involves complicated procedures to turn it into submissions admissible in court," he says.

Mr Poon says the difficulty in presenting electronic evidence to courts has become a key challenge for the department. The Customs Department has spent HK$2.6 million this year buying new equipment for cyber-investigation. It has also set up a computer forensic laboratory to examine electronic evidence.

Mr Poon says the Government is considering amending legislation to help curb Internet piracy.

"We have set up an inter-departmental team to study if we need to amend the Copyright Ordinance. During our investigation, we do feel there are areas that can be enhanced," he says. "The team will study if there is the need to amend laws and if so, how we should do that."

The department has invited three special agents from the US Cyber-Smuggling Centre to teach officers from the police, the Independent Commission Against Corruption and Customs how to conduct investigations in cyberspace.

US Customs representative Andy Yu says computer forensics had become increasingly important. He says the number of electronic forensic experts employed by US Customs has doubled this year.
Lucas Hui Chi-kwong, director of the Centre for Information Security at the University of Hong Kong, says computer forensic techniques are not sophisticated enough.

"One worry is that this evidence can be easily changed by individuals without leaving an obvious trace," Mr Hui says. "That's why we must have a strict procedure to prove the evidence is intact and unchanged. Otherwise this evidence can be seriously challenged in court."

Deputy law draftsman Gilbert Mo Sik-keung says the law on selling illegal products over the Internet was not very clear. "In areas like defining the owner of the products or the place of transaction, there is still some ambiguity," he says.

Computer-related crime is in decline according to the latest official figures. Police recorded 225 computer-related crimes up to July this year, marking a 30 per cent drop from the 317 cases reported over the same period last year.