Lai See | Revealing Hong Kong identity numbers is not a privacy issue

Unwanted incinerator.

Corporate governance advocate David Webb has come up with an interesting wheeze to persuade the government to drop its planned move to remove directors' addresses and ID numbers from the Company Registry. The ostensible reason for the government's move is to protect directors' privacy. But, as Webb and other opponents of the proposed change argue, the HKID isn't something private like a PIN number or a password that authenticates you. It is simply a more precise identifier than a name, since a number of different people can have the same name, but not the same ID number.

Revealing an ID number will divulge nothing more about a person other than that he is a particular person and not another. So Webb's suggestion is that everyone should publish their HKID number to make the point that publishing ID numbers is not a privacy issue.

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