Hong Kong Legislative Council Election
Martin Chan, South China Morning Post
The Problem
In the wake of the National Security Law and the forced closure of major pro-democracy news outlets, the digital record of Hong Kong’s political evolution became increasingly fragile. As the city underwent significant electoral changes in 2021 and 2022, journalists faced a landscape where information could be easily suppressed, altered, or deleted from centralized platforms, threatening the long-term integrity of the historical record.
The Solution
South China Morning Post Deputy Photo Editor Martin Chan, as a Starling Journalism Fellow, led a team to implement the Starling Framework during the 2021 Legislative Council and 2022 Chief Executive elections. Using authenticated camera capture, the team cryptographically signed photos and their technical metadata at the moment of capture. These “digital fingerprints” were then registered on decentralized ledgers to create an immutable audit trail. This ensured that every image of the electoral process remained a verifiable, tamper-proof witness to history, preserved beyond the reach of centralized interference.
Summary
Starling Lab and Martin Chan of the South China Morning Post utilized cryptographic authentication to establish a permanent, verifiable record of Hong Kong’s high-stakes elections during a period of intense political transition.