“3.23 Civil Referendum” project All personal information destroyedBack

The Public Opinion Programme (POP) at the University of Hong Kong has recently destroyed all personal information collected during the “3.23 Civil Referendum” project, including all HKID card numbers and mobile phone numbers, in electronic and paper format. Details as follows:

Electronic Ballots

POP has completely destroyed all personal data collected in electronic format from all the polling stations, internet platform and mobile applications which included citizens’ HKID card numbers and mobile phone numbers on 28 March. Meanwhile, POP has also ensured that no electronic copies of these personal data were saved or retained in any desktops, tablets, servers and related systems in our office.

Before the data destruction, only two IT staff of POP had the authority to gain access to the database of the relevant system but they were prohibited from entering the system by administrative means and all data have not been interrupted by other means.

Moreover, since the system has converted all HKID card numbers and mobile phone numbers upon registration into a chain of irreversible Hash Codes for storage and such information has been completely destroyed, hence, the privacy of all registered citizens has been well protected.

Paper Ballots

POP has entrusted the “Secure Information Disposal Services Limited” on 30 March to completely destroy all personal data collected from the polling stations during the event which included all envelops with HKID card numbers as well as the paper ballots casted. The whole transfer and destruction process was closely monitored by POP staff ensuring all information was completely destroyed.

Other Matters

During 23-24 March, many citizens, when trying to cast their votes online, had received the message “failure to send SMS” and hence could not complete the voting procedure. We would like to clarify that because voters had not yet entered the voting interface to make their choices, the system had not recorded those cases as successful and certainly did not count them as “abstention”.  

POP plans to release our financial report on 23 April in account of all expenses of this project.