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posted by martyb on Thursday July 09 2020, @12:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the communication-wants-to-be-free dept.

Millions Losing Access to Internet

Millions losing access to internet:

Millions of people look set to lose access to the free and open internet as China’s control over Hong Kong increases.

A new law was ushered in by Beijing last month that gave China sweeping powers over opposition against itself, both within its borders and outside of them, which could put people in jail for years if they commit vaguely defined political crimes.

The controversial national security law was used to make arrests within hours.

[...] Hong Kong police now have sweeping powers to order social media platforms and publishers to remove content, as well as ban the platforms altogether.

Undefined “exceptional circumstances” also give police the right to seize and search electronic devices.

A number of tech companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft and Zoom have said they’re pausing the review of law enforcement requests for data or stopping it altogether while they assess the impact of the new law.

[...] Tech companies and many others have been balancing a desire to uphold support for Hong Kong independence during recent protests with the desire to avoid annoying the Chinese government and losing access to its market of 1.4 billion, increasingly upwardly mobile citizens.

Hong Kong Downloads of Signal Surge as Residents Fear Crackdown

Hong Kong downloads of Signal surge as residents fear crackdown:

The secure chat app Signal has become the most downloaded app in Hong Kong on both Apple's and Google's app stores, Bloomberg reports, citing data from App Annie. The surging interest in encrypted messaging comes days after the Chinese government in Beijing passed a new national security law that reduced Hong Kong's autonomy and could undermine its traditionally strong protections for civil liberties.

The 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to China came with a promise that China would respect Hong Kong's autonomy for 50 years following the handover. Under the terms of that deal, Hong Kong residents should have continued to enjoy greater freedom than people on the mainland until 2047. But recently, the mainland government has appeared to renege on that deal.

[...] The New York Times reports that "the four major offenses in the law—separatism, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign countries—are ambiguously worded and give the authorities extensive power to target activists who criticize the party, activists say." Until now, Hong Kongers faced trial in the city's separate, independent judiciary. The new law opens the door for dissidents to be tried in mainland courts with less respect for civil liberties or due process.

This has driven heightened interest among Hong Kongers in secure communication technologies. Signal offers end-to-end encryption and is viewed by security experts as the gold standard for secure mobile messaging. It has been endorsed by NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden.

[...] Bloomberg has also reported on the surging adoption of VPN software in Hong Kong as residents fear government surveillance of their Web browsing.


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:43AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @12:43AM (#1019290)

    Yes, forced, but the Shanghai Concession [wikipedia.org] was a mere 8.72 sq mi. and the French Concession [wikipedia.org] was 66 hectares (986 mu). How big is China, again, you ignoramous? Population?

    China was never Colonized. Even the Japanese only took Manchuria. So get your history straight, and stop feeding us your bigoted rural American view of the world.

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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:16AM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:16AM (#1019310) Journal

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concessions_in_China#List_of_concessions [wikipedia.org]

    There is a more complete list of concessions. Now, how about the conditions of those concessions? Maybe you'll tell us about how things actually worked with a concession - and at the same time explain why no western nation would willingly accept any such conditions.

    And, please explain all the ways in which a concession differed from a colony.

    In these concessions, the citizens of each foreign power were given the right to freely inhabit, trade, do missionary reductions, and travel. They developed their own sub-cultures, isolated and distinct from the intrinsic Chinese culture, and colonial administrations attempted to give their concessions "homeland" qualities. Churches, public houses, and various other western commercial institutions sprang up in the concessions. In the case of Japan, its own traditions and language naturally flourished. Some of these concessions eventually had a more advanced architecture of each originating culture than most cities back in the countries of the origin of the foreign powers. Over time, and without formal permission, Britain, France, Japan and the United States established their own postal systems within their concession and trade areas.[2] Following Chinese complaints over the loss of postal revenue and the lack of customs inspections, all of them were abolished at the end of 1922.[3]

    Chinese were originally forbidden from most of the concessions, but to improve commercial activity and services, by the 1860s most concessions permitted Chinese, but treated them like second-class citizens as they were not citizens of the foreign state administering the concession. They eventually became the majority of the residents inside the concessions. Non-Chinese in the concessions were generally subject to consular law, and some of these laws applied to the Chinese residents.

    Long story short, foreign nations were sucking the wealth out of China, pretty much the same as colonizing nations tended to suck the wealth out of their colonies. And, wasn't this the colonial period? Colony, concession, potato, potahto.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:47AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @01:47AM (#1019321)

      Silly American! Do you not know the concessions were the result of the Opium Wars? Brits selling their "product" from their "colony" of Afghanistan? And do you not know that the condition for the return of the French Concession was the removal of Chinese troops from the north of French Indochina, which lead directly to the Vietnam war of liberation? And when the French failed, the Americans stupidly stepped in, and got their butts kicked.

      • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:31AM (1 child)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 11 2020, @03:31AM (#1019362) Journal

        I'll be perfectly honest with you: There is a helluva lot that I DO NOT know about China. But you keep making silly statements that are pure bullshit.

        China was divvied up and parceled out amongst various European powers, as well as Japan. You can make a very good argument that China retained far more autonomy than India, or any of dozens of other colonies around the world. But, you can't win any argument that China was never colonized, or whatever you claimed a couple posts back.

        If you really want to prove your superiority in regards to knowledge of Chinese history, you might conceded that China was indeed colonized. Then you might explain to all of us how the concessions were more advantageous to China than the sort of colonization that was seen in Africa, and the rest of the world.

        • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:47PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:47PM (#1019628)

          If you really want to prove your superiority in regards to knowledge of Chinese history, you might conceded that China was indeed colonized.

          All I have to do to prove my superiority is to allow that your ignorance is as good as actual history? This is why America is not getting great again, and in fact is getting more and more stupid. You are right that there is a lot you do not know, and this notion that China was someone's colony is one of the things you do not know. You really ought to just be quiet, Runaway1911, and stop thinking you have to express yourself on all the things you do not know, which you would be ashamed of doing, if you had any idea how ignorant you are.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:58PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @06:58PM (#1019631)

    How big is China, again, you ignoramous? Population?

    China was never Colonized. Even the Japanese only took Manchuria.

    Manchukuo, which is "only" 12% of the land area of the entire country, sure. And they invaded other areas, too.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @11:35PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @11:35PM (#1019688)

      Yes? And they were expelled from those areas in less than 7 years, for the most part, and really did not have political control for most of the period, as the Communists were kicking their butts. Invasion and a shaky occupation for a short (historically speaking) period of time is not "colonization".