Peck Weihong, a fomer police sergeant, was jailed for misusing a police database to check on whether a criminal complaint of rape was lodged agaisnt a friend. Under the Computer Misuse Act, since he was not authorised to carry out this check, he had committed the offence of unauthorised access.
For this offence, he was jailed for 3 weeks. The court agreed with the prosecutor that a jail term was customary for such offences. Although he only committed one offence, the stiff sentence shows the court's attitude to protecting confidential government data.
An issue pointed out previously - if he had looked a paper file rather than a computer file, in similar circumstances, would he have been punished in the same way.
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