Since the passage of the new national security law last June, democracy movements in Hong Kong have been severely repressed. Dozens of activists were arrested, elections for the renewal of the local parliament postponed (officially due to the coronavirus epidemic) and the “one country, two systems” principle that governed relations between the freer semi-autonomous city was violated , and the rest of China.
Several Hong Kong “exceptions” (such as the fact that the Chinese police and security forces could not operate in the city) disappeared after the law was passed and others were weakened, such as freedom of the press after the arrest of Jimmy Lai, the famous editor of the opposition and pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. Another feature that distinguishes Hong Kong from the rest of China is that the internet in the city is completely free: Hong Kong is not included in the Great Firewall, the system that prevents Chinese citizens from accessing sites that are not approved by the government. To give some examples, Facebook, Google and New York Times, which in China are not accessible, in Hong Kong they are.
After the security law was passed, however, Chinese police forces have used the internet as a tool of repression in Hong Kong in various circumstances, and many experts argue that the city is moving towards a reduction in freedoms online as well. The law gives the police the power to remove any online content considered dangerous and to access any data they deem useful if it were to serve national security investigations. In general, the police are allowed very broad powers, such as the ability to intercept telephone calls without a warrant. After the passage of the law, the main digital companies stopped all cooperation with the Hong Kong police.
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A few days ago, the Washington Post reported that the mass arrests of activists made by the police in early January also had consequences in terms of freedom of expression online. After arresting 53 people, some of whom were former members of the local parliament, trade unionists and other prominent figures in civil society, the police seized more than 200 phones and laptops, belonging not only to those arrested but also to relatives and relatives not active in politics.
Hong Kong police confiscated the activists' electronic devices even before the security bill was passed, but the Washington Post reports that they used the phones of some of the 53 arrested in ways that did not respect the rule of law. Tam Tak-chi, a radio presenter, after being arrested would have signed up for Telegram, a messaging app widely used in the democratic movement, and would have started trying to contact other activists. But Tam was in prison at the time, and through a trusted person he made it known that he had not activated any Telegram account. Almost all 53 activists arrested were released on bail, but many said their email accounts or social networks showed suspicious activity in the days following the confiscation of the devices. Some, just after the confiscation, were warned by Google that their accounts were under attack by state hackers.
After the National Security Law was passed, the Hong Kong police also began sending confiscated phones to China, where there would be better equipped laboratories for information extraction.
Already last August, the New York Times explained that with the approval of the law on national security, the techniques of repression and online police investigation had become much harsher and not respectful of the rule of law. The article told of Tony Chung, an activist accused of a crime that did not exist before the approval of the new law: having written a post on Facebook in favor of Hong Kong's independence (Chung denies having written it). The police arrested him while he was in a shopping mall, immobilized him, took his phone, an iPhone, and placed it in front of his face to be able to unlock it with facial recognition. Then he took him to his house and forced him to put his finger on the fingerprint sensor of another phone, and began interrogating him for the passwords of all his accounts. Chung said he managed to prevent the cops from accessing his phones: he closed his eyes and twitched his facial expression to avoid facial recognition, and had previously turned off fingerprint unlocking. But the agents told him: «Do you know that with the national security law we have the full right to unlock your phones and get your passwords?».
The article also described how the police had installed a security camera in front of the homes of some activists, a well-known technique of the Chinese secret police, and had tried on multiple occasions to hack or surreptitiously access their social accounts.
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In addition, a site linked to democracy movements was made inaccessible to Hong Kong residents this month. It's called HKChronicles, it was founded by 18-year-old Naomi Chan and over time has collected a lot of material on the protests for democracy, including photos, videos, articles. Today, the site's best-known function is to make public information – including names, photographs and other data – of Hong Kong policemen who participated in the crackdown on protests and other supporters of the Chinese regime, including politicians and public officials, but also , in some cases, of ordinary citizens and shopkeepers.
This is an ethically questionable practice, and HKChronicles has been accused of complicity in some incidents of harassment and persecution. The need to identify policemen, however, arose when, starting in 2019, officers began to remove name tags during the most violent operations at demonstrations for democracy, which in some cases turned into brutal beatings.
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The site, which was obviously already inaccessible to Chinese citizens via the Great Firewall, has also been made inaccessible to those in Hong Kong. The New York Times and the South China Morning Post, the main newspaper in the city, confirmed that the police asked internet providers to black it out. It is a rather rudimentary and easily bypassed method, which has little in common with the Great Firewall used by the Chinese government, which is sophisticated and technologically advanced. However, some activists claim that the Hong Kong government has “created a precedent,” as Glacier Kwong, the founder of the Keyboard Frontline association, which monitors internet freedom in the semi-autonomous city, told the Washington Post. “When the regime does not like it, a website can be blocked for no reason under the national security law, and this is a clear damage to internet freedom, freedom of information and freedom of speech.”
Lokman Tsui, a professor at Hong Kong's Chinese University who deals with internet privacy and law, argues that the local government is “testing the waters” to encourage the imposition of some form of generalized internet censorship. This would be in contradiction with what was promised by the governor of the city, Carrie Lam, who, shortly before the approval of the security law, said that the new regulations would affect “a very small minority of the population”.
