A brand-new national security law has turned Hong Kong into a battlefield for the United States and China’s escalating war over control of the international internet. Whether Hong Kong eventually falls back China’s Great Firewall will depend on how strictly Beijing imposes the policy, and how prepared innovation platforms are to stand up in the face of Communist Celebration pressure— particularly when their company interests are at stake. Some tech giants like Google and Facebook have actually already stopped briefly accepting requests for data from Hong Kong authorities. Others, like Chinese-owned TikTok, have decided to take out of the area entirely.
The new law was enforced by the Chinese Communist Celebration with little input from regional Hong Kong officials, and went into effect on the night of June30 It develops a far-flung security apparatus with the power to punish a series of political actions, consisting of separatism and subversion of state power. Civil liberties groups worldwide quickly decried the step, and over the previous week, activists, researchers, and other susceptible groups started rushing to protect themselves from its prospective legal repercussions.
On Monday, Hong Kong’s recently established national security committee released guidelines clarifying how portions of the law will be executed. “The police can request online platform service providers to hand over information about their users, or remove content the government considers to be ‘threatening’ nationwide security,” states Jenny Wang, a strategic adviser at the Human being Rights Foundation. “This is a substantial danger to internet liberty and the anonymity that Hong Kong protesters have counted on in the previous year to arrange and exchange ideas.”
If companies like Google and Facebook decline to comply, they could be fined thousands of dollars, and their local staff members might be sent to prison for up to six months. The rules also particularly extend beyond Hong Kong’s borders: For example, Facebook might be compelled to produce details about a user in the US if Hong Kong authorities deemed their posts a danger to Chinese nationwide security. “Despite how often such requests are made, even the possibility of such extreme penalties for securing user data will leave foreign organisations in an extremely tough position,” Jeremy Daum, a senior research fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center in Beijing, wrote on Twitter. “They might well be entrusted no option but to leave [Hong Kong], which might be the goal.”
After the implementation rules were released, business including Google, Zoom, Microsoft, and Telegram all stated they would briefly stop accepting ask for user information from the Hong Kong government. “Zoom supports the totally free and open exchange of ideas and ideas,” a spokesperson for the business said in an e-mail, including that it was actively keeping track of the circumstance in Hong Kong. Representatives from Microsoft and Google stated the co
