Hong Kong, already grappling with tightened policing to rein in widespread protests that followed last year’s proposed extradition bill, is now bracing for the prospect of stricter digital controls — ones that would curtail free speech, communications and the ability to organize and turn the territory of 7 million residents into a surveillance state that more closely resembles mainland China.
In the past few years, law enforcement has deployed tens of thousands of closed-circuit television cameras in Hong Kong’s streets and shopping malls, used broad warrants to crack into the mobile phones of protesters, and deployed facial recognition software that can identify activists in massive crowds.
Now, residents and activists worry that the proposed national security legislation is to further encroach on civil liberties, as part of Beijing’s continuing effort to exert its influence over the former British colony.
Illustration: Tania Chou
Residents have already watched with concern efforts to curb free speech online. A similar bill proposed and later withdrawn in 2003 would have punished those who published seditious material with up to seven years in prison.
There are few details of what the imminent legislation is to contain. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) said in a statement last month that the legislation would “only target acts of secession, subverting state power and organizing and carrying out terrorist activities.”
Expected to be passed in coming weeks, it would also outlaw foreign interference in Hong Kong’s affairs.
Asked if the legislation would bring China’s Great Firewall to the territory, a spokesperson for the government said: “All the basic rights and freedoms legitimately enjoyed by Hong Kong residents will remain intact. The vast majority of Hong Kong people who abide by the law and do not participate in acts or activities that undermine national security will not be affected.”
However, Hong Kong Secretary for Security John Lee (李家超) presented a more ominous view. Beijing’s security ministries are expected to be involved in a new agency that would be set up once the new legislation was in place, Lee told the South China Morning Post. Mainland agencies would operate in Hong Kong “when needed,” Lee said, suggesting changes to constitutional limits to interference by mainland Chinese entities.
In a financial hub used to relative freedom, protesters and privacy advocates fear they are to face the kind of restrictions that are in place in China. There, the Great Firewall blocks Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and many of the other channels Hong Kongers use to communicate and organize online.
On the mainland, state-sanctioned apps such as WeChat are regularly monitored, and automated systems detect keywords the Chinese government has banned from use in online discussions, along with any images that might also break its rules.
There is no such censorship in Hong Kong. An unchecked internet benefits businesses and finance professionals using social media as much as it does activists organizing protests. A firewall similar to that in the mainland would cut access to most foreign news outlets, most foreign websites and messaging apps.
News Web sites would have to be state-approved and subject to censorship. Online forums and messaging apps would be monitored. Beijing-style digital controls would stop Hong Kong protesters and other activists from using the digital tools that have helped them organize.
Last month, China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) passed a resolution authorizing its top leadership committee to draft the legislation that Hong Kong’s government would have to enact.
A Chinese official declined to answer questions on whether China would extend its ban on Web sites and apps from the mainland to Hong Kong with the new legislation.
“This is a very specific question to ask. Specific legislation has not come out,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Hua Chunying (華春瑩) said on Thursday.
During the regular daily briefing she told reporters: “I want to make one point very clear, that is, the national security legislation for Hong Kong targets a small number of acts that seriously jeopardize national security.”
James Griffiths, journalist and author of The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet, said it was possible for China to impose a partial digital blackout on the territory.
“Hong Kong is ultimately a very small place. You could feasibly send internet companies cease and desist letters, and ask them to block certain Web sites,” Griffiths said.
In terms of surveillance cameras per capita, China has eight of the 10 most surveilled cities in the world, according to a study by consumer information service Comparitech. In restive Xinjiang where more than 1 million ethnic Uighurs are said to be held in detention camps, authorities have the ability to stop people without warrants and search their phones.
Hong Kong Legislator Charles Mok (莫乃光), who represents the information technology constituency, said he has asked Hong Kong’s security services for information on whether methods currently used in mainland China are now being deployed in the territory.
His efforts to find out how many surveillance cameras were in use met with different responses: One Hong Kong security official told him the government did not maintain those statistics, while another government official said there were tens of thousands of cameras in public squares, shopping malls housing estates and at the border.
Hong Kong Under Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Andy Chan (陳派明) in November last year told Mok in a letter that facial recognition technology might be used by law enforcement as part of an investigation “through established procedures if it is legally feasible,” but “will not be excessive.”
Chan wrote that personal privacy would be respected during an investigation, but declined to answer many of Mok’s questions “lest it should compromise the police’s technologies and capabilities” to do their work.
Protesters have fought back against additional surveillance. They have damaged dozens of so-called smart lampposts installed across the city that authorities say are meant to collect weather and traffic data. Protesters fear that the posts are soon also to sport cameras and facial recognition technology.
Before COVID-19 was even a whisper, protesters routinely wore face masks or brandished umbrellas to thwart cameras from recording and possibly identifying them. Protesters said that once identified, they have been intimidated by authorities for attending rallies and even lost jobs.
To anonymously post opinions on current events, and to plan protests and online campaigns, protesters have used LIHKG, an online forum which is often likened to Hong Kong’s version of Reddit, that could come under scrutiny from authorities once that legislation is in force.
Some residents of Hong Kong are not waiting to see what happen with the national security legislation. After news of the pending rules broke, Hong Kongers rushed to download virtual private network (VPN) apps that are banned in mainland China. VPN software allows to bypass government censorship online. Service provider NordVPN said it received 120 times more downloads on the day Beijing announced plans to usher in the new national security legislation than on the previous day.
The use of VPN technology by protesters dates back to the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011, when people in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere found ways to access foreign Web sites detailing the misdeeds of longstanding rulers, or publish content that would have earned them imprisonment at home, cybersecurity firm Rubica president Roderick Jones said.
“It’s not just about security. It’s about information. There’s very strong arguments for people using VPNs wherever they are. If you’re an activist you should think that way, but any normal person should also just use a VPN,” Jones said.
Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong (黃之峰) said he is concerned that the new national security legislation would only exacerbate police overreach.
Wong was arrested last summer on charges including “organizing unauthorized assembly,” and his mobile phone was among others seized and searched by law enforcement using technology that allowed them to crack his passcode. According to a police statement detailing the investigation and Wong’s application to the Hong Kong High Court to have the warrants declared unlawful, hundreds of messages on Telegram and WhatsApp were accessed and collected by police.
Once the new laws are in place, Wong fears that participating in a protest could land him in front of Chinese Communist Party-approved judges in mainland China, instead of the independent judiciary Hong Kong is known for.
“They might target me, I might be arrested and prosecuted, but not in Hong Kong, in China. Never say never under the hard-line crackdown of Beijing,” Wong said in an interview.
In an open letter, Amnesty International on Wednesday urged the leadership committee of the NPC to drop the proposed legislation.
“Although China has revealed few concrete details about the national security law, everything we know about it so far suggests it will threaten the basic rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong,” the organization wrote in a letter penned with more than 80 other rights groups.
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