New Territories North (NTN) Region held a Symposium on Technology Crime at NTN Headquarters on June 24 in order to heighten public awareness of technology crime through education and publicity, and to boost the professionalism of officers in dealing with such cases.

Besides detective officers from different Police districts, 400 people attended the symposium at the invitation of Crime NTN, including the chairmen of the district fight crime committees (DFCC) in Tuen Mun, Tai Po and North District, professionals, District Officers of Social Welfare Department, community leaders, social workers and students.

The DFCC chairmen, NTN Regional Commander So Kam-sing, representatives from the Social Welfare Department, and school principals officiated at the opening ceremony of the symposium.

In his opening address, Mr So pointed out that with the popularity of the Internet, the number of reported technology crime had increased while police would continue to tackle such crime as an operational priority. The Force is determined to maintain the safety and stability of the local Internet environment, Mr So stressed.

After his speech, Mr So presented letters of appointment to anti-crime celebrities, including singer Tse Man-nga Casey, Artist Harry Wong, Fencing athletes Nicholas Edward Choi and Cheung Siu-lun. The DFCC chairmen also presented letters of appointment to 50 students from the Lingnan Institute of Further Education as Anti-crime Ambassadors.  Mr So encouraged the ambassadors to disseminate anti-crime messages in the community and inspire people with their community service.

The symposium featured "Technology Crime" and "Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet", with Mr Cheng Yi-kin, the Analyst and Programmer of the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, and Mr Victor Tang, Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure and Operations, Asia Pacific, sharing their knowledge of technology crime and information security.

On "Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet", Dr Choi Wai-man, the Assistant Professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration in the Hong Kong University, and Police Clinical Psychologist Dr Ephraem Tsui spoke of the local situation and analysed the related activities from the point of psychology.

With the support of the general public and the effort of officers, Crime NTN has successfully detected various technology crime cases, including E-auction Fraud and crimes related to "Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet".  In addition to the experience sharing by the professionals, officers from NTN Regional Crime Units also provided refresher training and experience sharing sessions on investigation of E-auction Fraud and "Child Sexual Abuse on the Internet" at the symposium.