Understanding Hong Kong
Date: Tuesday, June 16
Time: 09:00am EST / 01:00pm UTC+0 (other times below)
What: Since June 2019, Hong Kong has had over 1,000 protests, and more than 8,900 people have been arrested. Protest started because Beijing wanted extradition to mainland China, which undermined judicial independence and endangered dissidents. A year later, Beijing now wants to impose vague national security laws that punish activities that they deem "threaten national security. How has the role of technology evolved in the protests? Why the Hong Kong protests have to thank the great firewall? What can Hong Kong teach us about the future of internet freedom and digital rights?
Slide Deck:
2003 - They had institutional surveillance after failure of article23. More institutions start favoring towards Beijing
in 2014 Education and internet were much freer from Beijing, this was after Umbrella movement in 2014.
Now, there is surveillance everywhere to arrest people and they got even educational leaders now to lean towards Beijing.
Surveillance has taken a different dimension since last year. Now its used to collect and gather evidence to charge people. Before, it was just to enforce self-censorship.
A lot of the surveillance is outsourced to the various institutions, nonprofit, education, industry etc. So people are not scared to go to jail, but also loose their job. As a result, protestors have started changing their name on social media, or de-activating their accounts.
You see many more digital attacks, like phishing attacks. Protestors need to improve digital security.
The government and the police have been seizing mobile phones.
Surveillance changes from passive from 2003 to active surveillance that started in 2019. Its not centralized, its across all institutions. Even Teachers, principals. What you say on social media can be used against you, even if it was years ago. Cathay Pacific was a told that they couldn’t fly into china by the chinese government because employees where showing support for protestors, so they started suspended staff, because China is a big market for them.
Censorship
Until 2014, it was passive censorship. In 2019, active censorship. As an example:
Victor Malet the former president of the foreign press club in Hong kong. Wanted to host talk for Andy Chang, president of the HK independence party. The government put so much pressure, that when Malet tried to come back to HK, he wasn’t given visa entry. The HK government didn’t give specific reasons.
Apple supports and is dependent on China, so follows its policies. The app store is censored in Hong Kong now, including an app that protestors were using to see where the police was.
Hong Kong just passed a bill that you can’t disrespect the national anthem bill, meant to censor criticism of government. Online its harder for the government to get into now.
Decline of free speech after 2003. Then during the umbrella movement in 2014, they stopped listening to people. Before if folks came out in massive numbers, government would listen. Now since in 2014, people came out to protest, but Hong Kong government held firm and refused to listen. This has contributed to the violence in the streets.
Decline of Free Speech
- Now all the censors are looking retroactively to what you said in your social media. When businesses do it, they can do whatever they want to their employees. What we see is a lot of workers have been organizing themselves in unions. This is very recent development and new. Examples
After city leader takes aim at banking giant, HSBC supports security law. In other words, if you don’t support, you won’t be able to do business here.
Alarming University comes out saying they support national security law.
What does the future look like:
National security legislation. There is no draft, so they are telling people to support a blank check. Its unclear, but what it may do: - to disqualify people form running in elections prohibit june fourth commemoration prohibit civil society orgs seeking to promote democracy in china prohibit protest songs at schools?
How will impact internet freedom
will it increase censorship will it require data localization will it ban vpns, encryption,
global platforms may have to leave.
why should you care? Hong kong is the canary in the coal mine. There are so many global companies that have been pressured to complying what chinese government wants. including NBA, Apple. There is
Chinese influence in elections australia, new zealand, and all over the world.
What can the world do to helP? how to help hong kong protest. (see link) how to improve your digital security (see link) continue to lobby if where you are They need allies that are strong on democracy, human rights, and IF Taiwan is the exception.
Lokman Tsui Great to hear some elaboration about the ‘positive’ impact of the GFW on curbing Beijing influence (evidence, anecdotal stories, etc.). What you see that a lot of governments there is protest, they put pressure on technology companies. this doesn’t mean that companies will comply, companies push back. This is ongoing battle. There are multiple voices in a company also. so battle whether you comply with government request. To what extent does the government have leverage? Do you have assets, employees there? Then it makes it more difficut. since big platforms have limited things on the ground in China, its hard to pressure them.
Are VPNS used? Apps tools are being used?
VPN became more popular after national security legislation. there was fear of what this will do to the internet, so lots of inquiries and installing. But VPNs are small part of the solution. Internet Freedom is not by targeting IF specifically, but eroding basic rights fundamentlay.
What apps have folks been using on the ground. Telegram is used a lot. WhatsApp. Facebook. Instagram. They all have different purposes. Mostly decentralized movement. Anyone can put a poster together and organize them. So they use these networks to help organize. The movement keeps adapting to the challenges the government puts. Hong Kong map.live,that was super used, but now blocked in apple. Its the crowd sourced tool that tells you if there is cops in a a specific neighborhood. Since they are seizing phones, its better to have apps that have disappearing messages.
A huge telegram channel was “busted” that has over 30,000 people. Since then people have been scared to both moderate and also/or join. They have been advising folks to get a burner phone.
Facial recognition is not something that is on the direct horizon right now. But we have also seem companies retro-actively use the stuff that you have bene posting. So you don’t know if pictures will be used in the future, so in that sense it is concerning. So in protest, its better to blur people’s face or take it from behind.
Disinformation from china. There is a very diverse response from different platforms. For example, the government says there are thousands of people that support the security law. This is gaslighting, and what it does it makes people question themselves. Twitter has been the most aggressive in countering it.
What role shadow banning or “reduced visibility“ deployed by platforms have impacted protestors? When people are not able to use Twitter in the same way. For example, Youtube have been demonetizing videos about the protest. And comments get flagged, as they didn’t get flagged. However, platforms are trying to do the right thing here.
