A former Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officer who used the ICA’s databases to access the personal details of women he sought to befriend was fined $29,000 on Tuesday (26 December) for breaching the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act.

Singaporean Yeo Kian Boon, 31, who was an inspector with the ICA, had accessed the database 18 times while working as a team leader at Changi Airport Terminal 1.

As his job was to supervise primary screening officers and to deal with persons referred to him by these officers, Yeo had access to the travellers’ travel records, passport details and their passport images.

On Tuesday, Yeo pleaded guilty to six counts of accessing data without authority and one count of abetting a colleague to commit the same offence. He had 16 counts of a similar nature taken into consideration for his sentencing. Yeo resigned from ICA on 13 January last year following the incident and is currently doing administrative work.

Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Alexander Woon said that while on duty on the night of 12 December 2015, Yeo screened a female Thai traveller who had been referred to him by a team member.

A day later, Yeo added the woman as his friend on the LINE, a messaging and social networking application. Yeo started calling her through LINE on 14 December but she did not pick up.

The woman made a video call to Yeo on 22 December to ascertain his identity and reason for calling. She was surprised to find that the caller was the ICA officer who had cleared her entry into Singapore. While off duty, Yeo also asked another ICA officer, Lau Jia Yi, to screen the Thai woman’s details for him.

Lau, who was on duty at Changi Airport Terminal 2 on 22 December 2015, then accessed the ICA database to check on female Thai travellers who entered Singapore on 12 December. He confirmed that Yeo had processed the Thai woman in question and sent her information to Yeo through WhatsApp.

According to court documents, Lau was issued with a warning and was not prosecuted.

Following the video call with Yeo, the Thai woman told her Singaporean boyfriend that an ICA officer who screened her had been calling her. Her boyfriend sent an e-mail to the ICA on 28 December 2015, complaining that Yeo had abused his authority in obtaining the woman’s contact number.

The ICA subsequently began internal investigations against Yeo. Yeo later told investigators that he obtained the Thai woman’s details as he wanted to confirm that he had cleared her into Singapore.

Yeo also accessed the ICA database six times on 27 December 2015 to obtain information on female travellers from Thailand, Japan and Korea. He had done so with the intention of befriending them.

DPP Woon asked for a $29,000 fine, stating that Yeo was “a public officer with access to personal data which he should not have used for personal reason”. The DPP added that there was a need to maintain public confidence in public servants. Yeo had also caused “major damage” to Lau’s career, the DPP said.

Yeo’s lawyers, Cory Wong and Josephus Tan from Invictus Law, said in mitigation that their client’s intentions were “naive and innocent”.

“(Yeo) instructs that he is inept at interacting with the opposite sex and all he wanted to do was to build his confidence by chatting with women on LINE,” said Wong. “Unfortunately, (Yeo) crossed the line when his conduct involved unauthorised access of the various ICA databases.”

The lawyer, who sought a $28,000 fine for Yeo, maintained that Yeo had not known that the Thai woman was a traveller whom he had cleared when he befriended her. While no harm was caused to travellers whose particulars he had obtained, the “real harm” had been done to Lau, who has since resigned from the ICA, said Wong.

In sentencing Yeo, District Judge Jasvender Kaur said that such unauthorised searches are “a betrayal of trust and lead the public to question the integrity (of public servants)”.

As a first-time offender, Yeo could have been fined up to $5,000 and/or jailed up to two years on each count of unauthorised access to computer material.

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