-18attributed to words with more than one meaning. It sometimes suggests a deficiency in drafting. However, it is not an unusual occurrence that even well drafted statutes offer choices of construction relevant to their application to a particular class of facts. That is the present case in relation to the words with which s 161(1) opens, namely “any person who obtains access to a computer …”. On one construction, relevant to the present case, a person “obtains access to a computer”, within the meaning of s 161(1) if he or she uses any computer, whether their own or somebody else’s. The alternative construction applies the section only to the use by a person of a computer belonging to somebody else. 38. The ordinary meaning of the words which open s 161 are indicative of “unauthorized” use of a computer as suggested in Li Man Wai v Secretary for Justice.13 The word “obtain” is relevantly defined in the Sixth Edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as “come into the possession or enjoyment of; secure or gain as the result of request or effort, acquire, get.” 14 “Obtain” so defined, is not a word which sits easily with the use by a person of their own device. Nor is the word “access” which, used as a noun, ordinarily means “admittance (to the presence or use of) … [the] action or process of obtaining stored documents, data etc.”15 As a verb, it includes in its usage “gain access to (spec. data etc held in a computer-based system, or such a system)”.16 As a matter of language one always “obtains” access to something to which one did not have access before. 39. There is a degree of redundancy in the statutory language to the extent that the verb “obtain” is a synonym for “access” when used as a verb. That overlap, however, merely emphasizes the oddness of applying s 161 to the use by 13 14 15 16 (2003) 6 HKCFAR 466. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (6th ed, 2007). Ibid. Ibid.