The Hong Kong government’s proposed amendment to its Personal Data Privacy Ordinance aims to enforce technology companies’ compliance with the territory’s curbs on freedom of speech, said Tzeng Yi-suo (曾怡碩), director of the Taipei-based Institute for National Defense and Security Research’s cybersecurity and decisionmaking simulation division.
After the proposal was announced, Google, Facebook and other companies said they might pull out of Hong Kong to protect their workers from prosecution under the amended law.
First proposed in May, the amendment calls for fines of up to HK$1 million (US$128,738) and up to five years in prison for posting another person’s personal data on social media, also known as “doxxing.”
The government said that the amendment would increase the scope of the ordinance and impose higher fines.
Tzeng wrote in an article on the institute’s Web site that the amendment is aimed at achieving social stability through the suppression of dissent and is similar to laws in mainland China.
The amendment comes amid efforts by democracy advocates to release the personal information of Hong Kong police officers, pro-Beijing politicians and other civil servants who played a role in the suppression of 2019 protests against a proposed extradition law, Tzeng said.
These efforts included posting license plate numbers of police officers’ private vehicles.
“However, the Hong Kong government has already changed the system for looking up license plates. If reporters try to access it, it will report false information,” Tzeng said. “It’s set up as a legal trap.”
During the 2019 demonstrations, democracy protesters also doxed Chinese social media users, he said, adding that the information included bank accounts, high-school entrance exam scores and other personal information.
“They even doxxed Chinese officials who had for a year worked in Hong Kong on the implementation of the National Security Law,” he said.
The doxxing of Chinese officials in Hong Kong played a role in the announcement of the amendment ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party, he said, adding that the government wanted to appear tough on the issue by making doxxing a criminal offense.
“The criminal nature of doxxing under the amendment was also intended to motivate tech companies to censor and remove such posts on their own,” he said. “Now, even if dissidents have the ability to doxx people, there is nowhere to publish the doxxed documents.”
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