The Registration and the Electoral Office of Hong Kong reported the disappearance of two laptops after the chief executive election. These laptops contained personal information of around 3.7 million city’s voters which could be compromised after the one of the biggest ever data breaches in Hong Kong.
This information that was stored on these devices has also included the names of about 1,200 electors on the Election Committee. These are names of the people who have selected Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor as the Hong Kong’s chief executive last Sunday, reports the South China Morning Post.
Theft of these two laptops apparently happened in the room at AsiaWorld-Expo on the Lantau which was described as election’s “fallback venue.”
The office has given an official statement concerning the disappearance of these laptops, and in this statement, they have claimed that there is no information about any of the relevant data leaks so far and also the information contained on the laptops is encrypted.
The situation is reported to the police around 4.40pm on the Monday, and it has been treated as theft so far. Even though New Territories South regional crime unit is investigating all the possible suspicions concerning the crime, no one was arrested so far.
A spokesman for Office of the Privacy Commissioner for the Personal Data said that “The case involves a huge amount of important personal data. The office is going to launch a probe.”
The theft of the computers has also been reported to the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs. In this report, it was stated that the computers had been found missing since Monday afternoon. So far, there was no comment from the AsiaWorld Expo.
Fung Wai-wah, the Election Committee member, stated that there was no information about the existence of the backup center for the election.