Hong Kong court dismisses press group’s legal challenge to limits on access to vehicle registry

2026-03-06 - 07:05

The High Court has dismissed a Hong Kong press group’s legal challenge against government restrictions on media access to the vehicle registry. Hong Kong Journalists Association. Photo: HKFP. High Court Judge Russell Coleman handed down his judgment on Friday, rejecting the Hong Kong Journalists Association’s (HKJA) judicial review against the Transport Department. The HKJA argued that the new arrangement on media access to vehicle ownership records, introduced by the Transport Department in January 2024, would hamper press freedom. According to the new arrangement, all journalists should submit a written application directly to the transport commissioner to access the vehicle registry. The transport commissioner will then decide whether there is a public interest in disclosing the vehicle information and whether this outweighs the right to privacy. In the judgment, Coleman ruled that the restriction on media access to the vehicle registry is lawful and does not excessively infringe upon press freedom. The High Court. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. “The freedom of the press is a freedom which is exercised primarily for the benefit of other persons and society as a whole (rather than for an individual journalist or group of journalists),” he wrote. The judge said, however, that the government should strike a balance between press freedom and the right to privacy, and that the government should review media applications for car plate searches with some “alacrity.” “That is not to say that it would necessarily be within a day or two, but it should not be a process involving many weeks,” Coleman wrote. Journalist Bao Choy’s case The Transport Department introduced the new policy after the government lost in a landmark case concerning a journalist’s use of the vehicle registry to obtain records of vehicles involved in the Yuen Long mob attack at the height of the 2019 protests and unrest. The Court of Final Appeal ruled in June 2023 that former freelance RTHK producer Bao Choy was not guilty of making a false statement in her application to access the vehicle registry, saying it was made for the purpose of “genuine investigative journalism.” Transport Department. File photo: Candice Chau/HKFP. A day after the top court’s ruling, the authorities said they would review the verdict and “improve” procedures for vehicle registry access. Protests erupted in June 2019 over a since-axed extradition bill. They escalated into sometimes violent displays of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger over Beijing’s encroachment. Demonstrators demanded an independent probe into police conduct, amnesty for those arrested and a halt to the characterisation of protests as “riots.”