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Following is the transcript of the Secretary for Commerce, Industry and Technology (SCIT), Mr John Tsang, speaking to the media after addressing the luncheon meeting of the InterChambers of Commerce on the legislative proposals to contain the problem of spam today (January 20):
Reporter: You have mentioned that the "do-not-call registers" will only be suitable for certain types of messages. How does the Authority decide that some messages cannot go on this register? What are those kinds of messages?
SCIT: There are different ways. For example, what we are saying is that some of the emails may not be quite suitable because it will not work, in the first place, and the regular spammers will not stop spamming because you have a "do-not-call register". On the other hand, what we will need to do is to find other ways, to look for technical solutions to screen out some of those things. So it would have to be a basket of solutions. I do not think we would have a singular means that we could deal with this issue.
Reporter: Could you explain why emails are not included and in future, will there be anything to include emails?
SCIT: First of all, it will not work. A regular spammer will not stop doing that because you tell him not to. And secondly, in this particular instance, for the spammers, they may just continue to do it anyway. So we do not think it is the most effective way of doing it. We have to find other solutions, including technical solutions.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)
Ends/Friday, January 20, 2006
Issued at HKT 18:02
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