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Facebook, WhatsApp and Telegram will deny legislation enforcement requests for user data in Hong Kong as they assess the impression of a brand new nationwide safety legislation enacted final week.
Facebook and its messaging app WhatsApp stated in separate statements Monday that they’d freeze the overview of presidency requests for user data in Hong Kong, “pending further assessment of the National Security Law, including formal human rights due diligence and consultations with international human rights experts.”
The coverage adjustments comply with the roll out final week of legal guidelines that prohibit what Beijing views as secessionist, subversive, or terrorist actions, in addition to overseas intervention within the metropolis’s inside affairs. The laws criminalizes some pro-democracy slogans just like the broadly used “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our time,” which the Hong Kong authorities has deemed has separatist connotations.
The concern is that the brand new legislation erodes the freedoms of the semi-autonomous metropolis, which operates below a ‘one country, two systems’ framework after Britain handed it over to China in 1997. That framework provides Hong Kong and its folks freedoms not present in mainland China, reminiscent of unrestricted web entry.
Spokesman Mike Ravdonikas stated Monday that Telegram understands “the importance of protecting the right to privacy of our Hong Kong users.” Telegram has been used broadly to unfold pro-democracy messages and details about the protests in Hong Kong.
“Telegram has never shared any data with the Hong Kong authorities in the past and does not intend to process any data requests related to its Hong Kong users until an international consensus is reached in relation to the ongoing political changes in the city,” he stated.
Social platforms reminiscent of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and WhatsApp have operated freely in Hong Kong, whereas they’re blocked within the mainland below China’s “Great Firewall.”
Though social platforms have but to be blocked in Hong Kong, customers have begun scrubbing their accounts and deleting pro-democracy posts out of concern of retribution. That retreat has prolonged to the streets of Hong Kong as properly.
Many of the retailers and shops that publicly stood in solidarity with protesters have eliminated the pro-democracy sticky notes and paintings that adorned their partitions.
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