Hong Kong’s election watchdog urged to come clean on city’s ‘worst’ data theft

The election watchdog is under growing pressure to come clean on the theft of computers ­containing personal information on the city’s 3.7 million voters.

A special meeting is slated in the Legislative Council to look into what was called Hong Kong’s most serious data breach.

The incident came to light on Monday when staff from the Registration and Electoral Office ­discovered that the two laptops had been stolen from a storeroom at the AsiaWorld-Expo centre on Lantau, which served as a back-up venue for the chief executive election on Sunday.

The laptops contained the names, addresses and identity card numbers of the voters, as well as the names of the 1,194 members of the Election Committee who picked Carrie Lam Cheng ­Yuet-ngor as the new chief executive of the city.