Elections chief apologizes after leak of candidates' personal data

Taipei, Oct. 29 (CNA) The head of Taiwan's Central Election Commission (CEC) apologized on Thursday after the national ID numbers of over 1,500 candidates for office, including those of top politicians, were reportedly exposed on its website for 11 days.

"This kind of thing should not have happened," CEC Chairman Michael You (游盈隆) said at a press conference, blaming the lapse on "negligent" handling by a third-party contractor.

The personal data exposure came to light on Wednesday, when an alliance of smaller political parties revealed that the personal ID numbers of 1,573 candidates running for mayor, magistrate or councilor in Taiwan's Nov. 28 local elections had been publicly accessible on a CEC financial disclosures database.

The alliance, known as Taiwan Go Go, consists of the New Power Party (NPP), Taiwan Obasang Political Equality Party, Taiwan Statebuilding Party and Green Party Taiwan.

NPP Chairwoman Claire Wang (王婉諭) said that while working to compile a "civil society version" of the official election bulletin, her team accessed the candidate asset declaration website made public by the CEC on Oct. 16.

On Tuesday, she said, her team discovered that although the website's public-facing interface displayed only basic personal information, use of a browser's built-in developer tools (such as by pressing the F12 key) allowed users to retrieve data including candidates' national ID numbers, without the need for an account or password.

In an initial response on Wednesday, the CEC said an external contractor had inadvertently exposed the national ID numbers, but claimed that the text in the files was "scrambled" and "indecipherable" to the general public.

Wang, however, noted in a Facebook post that the "scrambled" text was due to the "character encoding" settings, which could be rendered into Chinese characters using the browser's developer tools.

Moreover, national ID numbers are composed of English letters and numbers, and were not scrambled in the files at all, she said.

CEC update, apology

At the press conference Thursday, You said the CEC was notified of the leak of candidates' personal data on Tuesday evening, and fixed the issue within two hours.

Currently, all evidence points toward the exposure being an inadvertent oversight by an external contractor, Acer E-Enabling Service Business (AEB), which is owned by Acer Inc., he said.

You said his first reaction upon hearing of the leak was that it was "unbelievable" and "unacceptable." He acknowledged the "unease" it had caused among candidates and the public, and, along with the other CEC officials present, bowed in apology for the lapse.

Asked if the data leak would affect preparations for elections next month, You replied that it would not.

Regarding the leak, he said only 32 IP addresses visited the CEC financial disclosures database during the 11 days the sensitive data was accessible, none of which were located overseas.

As for whether the personal data had been copied by those who accessed it, You said the CEC could not be sure, since that information would only be on those users' computers.

Asked if the commission would seek compensation from the contractor, Huang Shang-hsiang (黃尚香), head of the CEC's ethics office, said it would do so following an investigation and in accordance with their contract.

After two days of deliberation on the issue and ways to prevent any recurrence, You said his provisional solution was to "strictly implement the four-eyes principle."

In cases where the government outsources or commissions a project, a team's completed work should be checked by another team, and then verified an additional time by the government itself, he said.

(By Wu Shu-wei, Hsu Wei-ting and Matthew Mazzetta)

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Source: Focus Taiwan