The police officers who came to take away Owen Chow on national security grounds last week left little to chance. Determined to find his phones, they had prepared a list of cellphone numbers registered to his name, even one he used exclusively for banking, the 23-year-old Hong Kong activist said. Officers called each number in succession, the vibrations revealing the locations of three iPhones around his apartment. By the end of their raids, police had amassed more than 200 devices from Chow and 52 others held that day for alleged political crimes, according to those arrested, as well as laptops from spouses who are not politically active and were not detained. The digital sweep showed how Hong Kong authorities are wielding their new powers under the national security law — introduced last summer — far more widely than the city’s leader promised. Since the Jan. 6 raids, authorities have blocked at least one website, according to the site’s owner and local media reports, raising concerns that Hong Kong is headed for broader digital surveillance and censorship akin to that in mainland China. Hong Kong police have begun sending devices seized from arrested people to mainland China, where authorities with sophisticated data-extraction technology are using the information from those devices to assist in investigations.
It’s sad for the people of Hong Kong, but not surprising in the least. When the UK handed back control of Hong Kong to China in 1997, it was only a matter of time before China forcibly reintegrated the island and brought it under the rule of the mainland (i.e. the CCP). Frankly, I’m only surprised that it took this long.
What a contrast, though, between the situation in Hong Kong (where government authorities are cracking down on private communication) and in the United States where the tech companies themselves are limiting the free speech of individuals like the President. Digital manipulation, like that undertaken by Trump and QAnon, requires political crackdowns. Those affected by the crackdown, like agents and operatives, are always naturally displeased.