English version :
Dear Editors,
We are a group of Hong Kong citizens who are extremely concerned about Hong Kong's future, particularly in relation to recent 'Extradition Bill' proposed by the Hong Kong Government. While we, so as majority of Hong Kong people, clearly do not see any imminent needs for the Government to rush such a controversial bill through legislation, it comes to our surprise that more than 800,000 people, as claimed by pro-Beijing societies in Hong Kong and cited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in China (link 1), have signed up a 'Safeguard HK' petition which urges immediate pass of the bill. To this end, we conducted some basic research and found potential evidences which could corroborate the petition is of fraudulent nature.
All the materials we used in this investigation were obtained directly from the website of 'Safeguard HK' in public domain (i.e. not through hacking), therefore we hold the view that the evidences presented are of legitimate basis.
Key Finding: The number declared on Safeguard HK website (
https://www.safeguardhongkong.hk) does not genuinely reflect the number of people signed for it.
(a) It is found that the 'petition number' stated on Safeguard HK website has been growing at a steady rate of 8 per minute, during the period of 12:50pm to 13:00pm on 11 Jun 2019, as revealed by a member of us:
[See Attachment 1]
(b) It is again found that the petition number grew at a steady rate of 60 per minute for the period of 10:35pm on 11 Jun 2019 to 12:00am on 12 Jun 2019, and 06:00am to 07:30am on 12 Jun 2019, as unveiled by a Facebook page:
[See Attachment 2]
Apparently, it is unreasonable for the petition number to grow at a completely steady and smooth manner.
In addition to empirical evidence, a member of us found, in the source code of the Safeguard HK website (note 1), the function displaying petition count on the website is a SQL query which filters a response from a database using the 'current time' parameter. It implies that the petition numbers had been pre-defined in a dedicated database (if not, there would be no need for the SQL query to filter against time - the only reason to filter against time is because they have future petition number in the database).
Taking all the empirical and theoretical evidences into account, we cast doubts on the legitimacy of Safeguard HK petition, and believe it might allegedly violates Fraud (or Conspiracy of Defraud) as defined in section 16A of Theft Ordinance Cap 210, which gives the relevant personnel a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment. Given the seriousness of fraud and vast public interest involved, we candidly invite your good company to conduct a thorough investigation on this matter, and make relevant reports to the public, as deemed appropriate.
A million thanks,
from a group of Hong Kong citizens
Link 1:
https://www.hk01.com/即時中國/338962/逃犯條例-外交部-堅決反對任何外部勢力干涉香港立法事務
Note 1: the source code was publicly available at the link
http://joint-sign.safeguardhongkong.hk/.git/config until it was removed on 11 Jun 2019. To protect the code duplicate, people who want can contact us at tg: @Hope1969 ).
），該網顯示聯署人數的函數(function)，其實是以現時時間作輸入值，並在一個已經記錄簽署人數的數據庫裡依時間段抓取記錄。如果網頁顯示的聯署人數的確是真實的，那就根本沒必要以"現時時間"去濾走數據。通俗啲講，即係聯署總數一早已經作定咗，只係因為時間未到所以未show出嚟。
