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 the majority of Hong Kong people, clearly do not see any imminent needs for the Government to rushpush forward with such a controversial bill through legislation. It has comecomes 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 to the 'Safeguard HK' petition which urges the immediate passing of the bill. To this end, we have conducted some basic research and found potential evidences which could demonstrate that the number of signatories in the petition is fake. corroborate the petition is of fraudulent nature.
All the materials we used in this investigation were obtained legally and 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 unreasonablehighly unlikely and unrealistic 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 have committedallegedly 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 a potential fraud and vast public interestinvolved, 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