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1. Developer seeks damages over flat sales suspension

2. Good security depends on human factor, says adviser

3. Wider array of weapons vital in war on spam

4. NWD sues over second project

5. More Wedding Card Street owners accept proposals and sell

1. Developer seeks damages over flat sales suspension
SARA BRADFORD, SCMP 25 March 2004

A New World Development company yesterday filed a writ seeking damages from the government over the suspension of sales of the Kingsford Terrace development, built under the private sector participation scheme.

The development in Ngau Chi Wan was one of the home ownership estates left in limbo after the government suspended subsidised housing sales in November 2002.

Yesterday, Advance Planner Limited, a company under New World Development, filed a High Court writ against the Housing Authority seeking an undisclosed amount of damages.

According to the writ, the development, comprising 2,010 residential units has been left vacant after the government breached earlier promises to allocate home buyers.

The writ further states Advance Planner Limited "continues to suffer loss and damages" for rates and payment of rents which would have been made by home owners.

Damages were also being incurred for maintaining the empty units in "saleable condition" while the buildings aged and property values eroded, it said.

The withholding of the units' sale continued to "severely handicap the marketability and sale opportunity of the commercial units", the writ said.

Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands Michael Suen Ming-yeung recently said the government was in discussions with the developers over the future of Kingsford Terrace.

Mr Suen also said last week that the demolition of the Hunghom Peninsula, another estate left in limbo, for redevelopment was not acceptable.

New World Development and its partners Sun Hung Kai Properties want to demolish the waterfront estate and rebuild the site with luxury units.

According to yesterday's writ, Advance Planner claimed it tendered for Ngau Chi Wan at a premium of $238.8 million for a term of 50 years after a memorandum agreement was signed on January 11, 2000.

The writ said the government breached the memorandum as it had "deliberately refrained ... from nominating home owners to purchase the units despite the subsequent completion by [Advance Planner] of the development". The writ claims the Housing Authority had made a "unilateral and fundamental" departure from the Private Sector Participation Scheme practice.

According to the memorandum, the authority is precluded "from attempting to force a completely different bargain on [Advance Planner]", the writ said.

The government announced a suspension of sales on September 3, 2001. On June 5, 2002, the chief secretary announced that the moratorium would cease to apply from July 1, 2002, and that the sale of flats would resume in two phases.

But Advance Planner was not allocated any of the flats, the writ said.

In the middle of November 2002, the government again revised policies and suspended further sales of the flats.

2. Good security depends on human factor, says adviser
THOMAS GOODWIN, SCMP 24 March 2004

There is too much emphasis on technology and very little on the human side of the security equation, says a senior consultant at security specialist Datalink Business Solution.

"Humans are the weakest part of a security framework and yet people tend to look at security as a technical challenge," says Thomas Yu, senior consultant for professional services at the Hong Kong-based firm.

"You can have the best, most theoretically sound security policies but enforcing them in reality can be very difficult."

Mr Yu believes considering the human factor is the first step in proactive security.

"Although many vendors have marketed the word `proactive', I tend to think proactive security is part of management attitude and discipline rather than an actual product," he says.

Security nowadays has a lot to do with "perceived threats", he says. "This makes security products [inherently] more reactive than proactive."

Another problem is that security products are still maturing.

"Although there are some areas in security where the market is quite mature, like firewalls and anti-virus software, overall it is still an emerging market," says Mr Yu.

"Most of the market leaders in security are smaller companies, which tend to take more risks to bring out innovative products. That has been the nature of the business for the past 10 years or so."

Unlike other sectors in the information technology industry, security is also not entirely a "need-dependent market", says Mr Yu.

"The market also depends on how the threat picture develops - it makes this sector very dynamic."

This has resulted in many specialists looking at different areas of security, with only a few companies looking to offer suites or aggregate different security functionalities together - a prerequisite for a proactive security product.

"The security industry itself cannot offer a product advanced enough to produce the results that proactive security calls for," Mr Yu says.

"That is why I see proactive security as more how management sees it than a technology issue."

The first step in proactive security is to realise there is no such thing as a bulletproof solution, he says.

"There is no 100 per cent security and there will always be something we call residual risk that will get through. People need to look at security as a risk management process."

He warns that understanding this and practicing it can be "vastly different".

"Even if a firm thinks proactively about security, it is still realistically a challenge because this is a resource-matching process," Mr Yu says. "Although good security depends on how well you build it up and how you choose your products, you need to have the right policies in place and right levels of enforcement. All these require resources that a company may not be able to afford."

Mr Yu does not think people in Hong Kong are ignorant about security products. "Rather, I think they do not understand the risk profiles of their own firms."

The situation will eventually improve, he says.

"Five years down the road, all this will definitely change, but we are in a dynamic environment and you can never be totally sure where the security threat will come from next, which is why firms need to become proactive."

3. Wider array of weapons vital in war on spam
THOMAS GOODWIN, SCMP 24 March 2004

Content filtering, readily available open-source tools and public blacklists were no longer enough to keep spam at bay, said British-based security vendor Sophos.

Sophos Anti-Virus Asia managing director Charles Cousins, who is based in Singapore, believes more sophisticated detection techniques are needed to weed out spam as it becomes a critical security threat.

"You have to stop the myth that stopping spam is just looking for key words," he says.

Spam, known formally as unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE), is "in its third generation", Mr Cousins says.

"Using content filtering alone is not going to stop it."

This is especially true as spam, traditionally treated as a nuisance and productivity killer, becomes a popular dispersal tool for virus writers.

Earlier this year, spam e-mails spread variants of the Bagle, MyDoom and Netsky viruses, using nifty social engineering techniques and encrypted infected attachments to wreak havoc on computers across the internet.

"Spam and virus writers are also sharing techniques, and it makes sense for us to have one bundled product," Mr Cousins says.

Sophos' own anti-spam candidate, PureMessage, uses "more than 700 different tests".

"Some of them are based on content but the majority are based on many different rules," Mr Cousins says.

Sophos acquired PureMessage when it bought anti-spam specialist ActiveState in September last year.

Mr Cousins says the product, which combines anti-virus and policy management features with anti-spam capabilities, uses both Sophos' own blacklist and public ones.

Blacklists, also called blackhole lists, are groups of internet addresses known to be sources of spam.

Keeping detection techniques proprietary is one good way to fight spam, Mr Cousins says.

PureMessage uses both open-source and proprietary tests to remove spam.

"We cannot tell anyone about [the proprietary methods] because then people will know how to get around spam detection engines."

Mr Cousins points out that making detection techniques public will only make them redundant.

"There is a trend towards open-source software but spam writers are using them to `QC' their spam."

Although PureMessage uses public blacklists, Mr Cousins believes these should be managed by professional organisations.

"Today, many public blacklists are manned by organisations or individuals who are not necessarily commercial," he says, adding that such lists sometimes mistakenly identify legitimate businesses as spam sources.

Professional organisations will be more careful than amateur groups or individuals about what they put on their blacklist because they can be sued more easily, he argues.

Spam is slowly becoming multilingual, with Sophos seeing more spam created in languages other than English.

Although the company claims that PureMessage, now in version 4.5, has a 97 per cent accuracy rate when it comes to detecting spam in English, "we are not claiming that in other languages", Mr Cousins says.

PureMessage can filter French and German spam and uses other techniques to "flag off" potential spam in other languages.

Mr Cousins adds that new language libraries "can improve the accuracy as there are some words that will be peculiar to that language".

However, he believes this is not a major issue, "because 95 per cent or more of spam is in English and [junk e-mails] are only just coming out in other languages".

4. NWD sues over second project
Staff reporters, The Standard 25 March 2004

New World Development (NWD) is taking the government to court for scrapping the sale of former subsidised flats at Kingsford Terrace in Ngau Chi Wan.

The legal move is the second by the same developer in the past eight months.

The developer filed a High Court writ last July against the government for breach of contract and demanded compensation for losses and management fees at another subsidised project it helped built - Hung Hom Peninsula.

That litigation remains unsettled.

In early February, the government agreed to forgo a settlement with NWD of HK$2,300 per square foot, settling instead for HK$1,800, to turn the 2,470-home Hung Hom Peninsula into a private development.

The government has been strongly criticised for disposing of the flats to NWD for only HK$864 million worth of premium payment.

In the latest writ filed at the High Court yesterday, NWD, through its subsidiary Advance Planner, claimed the government breached an agreement signed by both sides on January 11, 2000.

The writ said the developer had won a tender for HK$238.8 million in late 1999 to build 2,010 Home Ownership Scheme (HOS) flats for the Housing Authority under the Private Sector Participation Scheme. Under the terms and conditions of the subsidised housing plan, later called Kingsford Terrace, the authority must nominate buyers ``well before the development was completed'', it said.

Yet, the government and the authority ``have acted in wrongful breach of contract'' by not selling any of the 117 million square metres of residential flats, 1.88 million sqm of shops, an old folks' home covering 327,002 sqm, 337 car parking spaces and 32 motorcycle spaces.

Advance Planner said in the writ that while the government had twice suspended HOS sales in 2001 and 2002, the authority did not allow the almost completed flats at Kingsford Terrace to be sold when it had a chance after the first moratorium.

As a consequence of not releasing the HOS flats for sale, ``the plaintiff has suffered and continues to suffer loss and damages'', including rates payable since the occupation permit had already been issued, and government rents payment ``which would have been payable by the home-owners''.

The developer also claimed it suffered loss of sale proceeds, rental income and management fees, regular maintenance cost, fall in value of the flats, financial charges and interest. The plaintiff is suing for damages yet to be assessed, interest and costs.

However, according to earlier assessment, the government must pay the developer HK$1.441 billion. Surveyors have said that with land prices having risen more than 10 per cent over the past few months and the government not selling the project at fire-sale prices, the premium settlement at Kingsford Terrace may range from HK$1,500 to HK$1,700 psf.

The premium amount could be as low as HK$1.88 billion. As a condition of the settlement, NWD will agree to give up its right to a guaranteed HK$1.441 billion from the authority for failing to nominate purchasers for the flats deadline by June this year. It will only pay a premium of about HK$434 million or just HK$347 psf.

The writ filed by the developer was a clever tactic to press the government to sell off a former subsidised project on the cheap, one lawmaker said. Democrat legislator Albert Chan said the latest Kingsford Terrace case could see a repeat of the controversial Hung Hom Peninsula fiasco.

``Obviously, the intention of the writ filed by the developer is to press the government again to get personal interest,'' he said.

A Housing Authority spokeswoman confirmed it had already received a writ from NWD. However, the authority was not prepared to comment last night.

The government had not given a positive response to the Kingsford Terrace project and the company had to pay more management fees, face regular maintenance costs and financial charges and interest, NWD director and general manager Stewart Leung said yesterday.

``So we have decided to take legal action to protect our interest.''

5. More Wedding Card Street owners accept proposals and sell
CHLOE LAI, SCMP 25 March 2004

The Urban Renewal Authority has made a last-minute push to convince property owners in Wan Chai's Wedding Card Street to sell ahead of its planned demolition, with 46 per cent of owners agreeing ahead of yesterday's formal deadline for accepting offers

The slum-clearing authority said other owners would be allowed to continue to negotiate without penalty.

But some owners complained that URA officers had pressured them into selling, telling them that if they did not agree before the deadline, they would not receive as much money for their properties.

"A troop of URA staff came to our street very early in the morning," said Kam Fok Lai-ching a member of a concern group that has been set up by property owners in the street.

"They knocked on the doors of those yet to sign the agreement and told them if they didn't sign before 5pm ... part of the compensation will be cut.

"But this is a lie, Billy Lam Chung-lun [the URA's managing director] promised last night that we would be receiving full compensation even if we passed the deadline. The problem was that when the URA staff came this morning, all the young people had gone to work, there were only elderly at home and they were scared."

Eddie So Shuen-yee, the authority's general manager for external affairs, admitted that staff had visited Lee Tung Street - the proper name of the street known for its array of wedding invitation printing shops - for last-minute lobbying but insisted residents had misunderstood their message.

"Visiting affected people and talking to them is routine work," he said.

"It was natural for them to go there yesterday, especially when it was the deadline. It was important for them to remind the residents that the deadline had come.

"I question the accuracy of the conversation. Everyone has their own interpretation and people tend to choose what favours them. I am not saying the residents are lying. I think it is a matter of interpretation."

Mr So added landlords could still withdraw from their agreements and renegotiate if they thought they had been treated unfairly.

The authority said yesterday that it was happy with the response rate and was confident that more landlords would sell their properties in the coming days.

The demolition of Wedding Card Street is part of a $3.58 billion project to transform an ageing part of Wan Chai into a leisure, shopping, residential and commercial district.