In Hong Kong, Protesters and Police Are Now Doxxing Each Other

As protests continue to rock Hong Kong, social media sites are now being used to share names, photos, phone numbers, ages and occupationa of individuals "on both sides of the protest line," reports the Guardian: Supporters of the Hong Kong government have sought to identify masked protesters at demonstrations, while protesters themselves also appear to have taken part, sharing private information about police officers and their families across Telegram... Hong Kong's privacy commission said it had received 1,376 complaints and 126 enquiries between 14 June and 18 September regarding personal information being leaked online, according to Stephen Kai-yi Wong, privacy commissioner for personal data. While journalists have become a high-profile target, about 40% of cases involve police officers while the rest concern government officials, community leaders, the families of police officers, and other citizens, Wong said....

Craig Choy, a spokesperson for Hong Kong's Progressive Lawyers Group and a specialist in data protection law, said the high volume of cases was unprecedented in Hong Kong... The privacy commission has referred nearly 1,000 cases for criminal investigation and consideration for prosecution. Eight people were arrested in July for doxxing police officers, according to Hong Kong Free Press. Choy said doxxing of police began after officers stopped wearing badge numbers on their uniforms when they attended protests -- leading protesters to attempt to identify officers independently as police tactics and arrests began to escalate.

Not going to end well

[phantomfive]

It's not clear how the situation in Hong Kong is going to end, but it isn't going to end well.

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[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

It's not clear how the situation in Hong Kong is going to end, but it isn't going to end well.

I expect it to end in the good scenario when the demands of the protesters are met (with an acceptable compromise), and this probably won't happen until they lose control of the police or in the bad scenario when they call in the military and they just obey orders.

I'm interested to know how people in Hong Kong analyse the situation, how do they see the endgame?

Re: Not going to end well

[phantomfive]

The ones I've talked to see it as hopeless. That's a very small subset of the people of course.

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[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

I hope they can keep it up, I don't think it's hopeless and they have my support. A massacre could in extension threaten the Chinese one party system. I don't see how the Chinese would believe that letting Hong Kong keep their relative freedom would threaten them in the same way, and as they vilify the Hong Kong protesters, it wouldn't surprise me if their "tolerance" turns out to be a propaganda victory towards the Chinese people.

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[Admiral Krunch]

They can't afford to let the mainlanders see that protesting works.
If protesting and rioting ended up giving the rioters and protesters even more freedoms than they have now, all hell could break loose on the mainland.
That's worse than a little massacre swept under the rug.

Re:Not going to end well

[meerling]

The turnover of Hong Kong to China had restrictions on it. Certain things had to be maintained until a certain time, which is still far away.
China has been continuously violating that agreement, much to the detriment of the residents of Hong Kong.
The HK people are seriously pissed over getting F'd over by China, despite the agreements to not do so.

On the other hand, China is showing they don't give a F about their international agreement to obtain HK. They also have an ideological need to not show any tolerance for deviation from the standard rules they set for the populace. HK having any variations from that is something that the Chinese government can't stand, and foolishly thinks that it undermines their entire rule. (Too nearsighted to see that violating their agreement undermines their authority far more of a threat than a newly returned region having some limited autonomy.)

Do you really think China will act rationally?
I don't. They murdered people in Tienanmen Square, and suppress knowledge of those events from their own people, why in the heck would anyone think they're going to give in to HK? After all, they got away with it at least once so far.

Of course this is even bigger than Tienanmen Square, but that just means it's going to end up being a much bigger mess. China is already at fault and upping the ante against civilians that are in the right to protest. This will end in blood.

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[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

The case against a Tiananmen Square situation (which is one of the two scenarios i posed) is that although control over media in domestic China seemingly has increased, I don't think it actually has. When the Tiananmen Square massacre happened, it was live on CNN, but the reporting to the Chinese people was heavily censored and is to this day. Anything that happens this time will be live broadcast and recorded by thousands of mobile phones that in one way or another will reach the Chinese people. I believe

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[Cederic]

Plus the UK has legal obligations towards Hong Kong that the British people will demand are upheld in the face of something like a massacre.

It's unlikely to lead to war between the UK and China but it could certainly get nasty. I'm not sure China are willing to take that on.

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[Agripa]

Plus the UK has legal obligations towards Hong Kong that the British people will demand are upheld in the face of something like a massacre.

It's unlikely to lead to war between the UK and China but it could certainly get nasty. I'm not sure China are willing to take that on.

So the UK will tell China to stop or they will tell them to stop again?

The only things the UK can do is trade sanctions and accept refugees. And China may prevent the later so that is not up to the UK.

Re: Not going to end well

[Ogive17]

I was in china a few years ago. The youth absolutely know what is going on. They seem to be biding time until the ruling generation is gone. Similar to how we are waiting out the baby boomers in the US.

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[cascadingstylesheet]

I was in china a few years ago. The youth absolutely know what is going on. They seem to be biding time until the ruling generation is gone. Similar to how we are waiting out the baby boomers in the US.

Um, if by "similar" you mean "completely different, because China has a murderous totalitarian regime, and we don't", then, er, yeah.

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[Amomymous Coward]

Yes yes, waiting out. There will be better life in heaven, have you not heard? :)

And also because the ruling generation does not have their successors already chosen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , yes?

Its land of opportunity, you can be a millionaire too, just you wait (tm) :)

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[penguinoid]

There's no way the integration of Hong Kong into China can end well. The city is a comparison between China's government and a more western government, and has one of the highest per-capita incomes in the world. If they retain their freedom and wealth, the other Chinese might be a wee envious, if they become worse off then it makes the government look inferior.

When the lease of HK to the British Empire was expiring, the decade leading up to it saw many of the more successful people flee, and there was an ec

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[backslashdot]

Is that clear?

Re:Not going to end well

[ShanghaiBill]

It's not clear how the situation in Hong Kong is going to end, but it isn't going to end well.

MLK used to say "Keep your eyes on the prize", which meant that a protest should have a clear achievable goal and should not lose focus. The Memphis Garbage Strike and Montgomery Bus Boycott had the clear goals of achieving fair wages and desegregated buses.

The HK protesters are not following that advice. They have no specific goal (their original goal of stopping the extradition law has already been achieved), and their demands for full political autonomy is something that the CCP will never grant.

I don't think Beijing will send in PLA troops. In 1989, the CCP was afraid that the Tiananmen Square protests would spread, spin out of control, and it would be 1966 all over again. There is no danger of that now. The HK protesters have zero sympathy in the rest of China.

Re: Not going to end well

[phantomfive]

Yeah, that is the Chinese view for sure.

Re:Not going to end well

[Solandri]

The British ceded control of Hong Kong to China in 1997. (They had leased it from China for 99 years, arguably while China was under duress.)

The Tiananmen Square massacre [wikipedia.org] was in 1989. So the people in Hong Kong know all about it, and the risk they are taking by protesting. The fact that they are protesting regardless I think says something about their level of determination. Shortly before the 1997 handover, they had been trying to negotiate ways to obtain British citizenship so if they couldn't remain a British colony, they could emigrate to other British territories.

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[whoever57]

They had leased it from China for 99 years, arguably while China was under duress.

Not quite. Hong Kong itself was British territory and not leased. But the land around Hong Kong was leased. Hong Kong itself would have not been viable without the leased land, hence the UK ceded HK to China in 1997.

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[Admiral Krunch]

That's 20 something years ago. Most of the student protesters would have been toddlers if they'd even been born yet.

Pigs out of uniform

[Retired ICS]

"police began after officers stopped wearing badge numbers on their uniforms when they attended protests"

Hearabouts someone wearing a police uniform without wearing the proper badge would be considered not to be a police officer but rather impersonating a police officer. Anyone engaging in such activity and cause a "ruckus" could be killed with little to no consequence.

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[Opportunist]

Well, "hearabouts" seems to be somewhere in a country that is mostly still free, it seems. Can't really compare that to China.

Re:Pigs out of uniform

[meerling]

Not in the US. They'd still go after you as a cop killer, despite the police acting in violation of the law.
Don't forget, this is the country where cops decided to beat the crap out of an unresisting man and charged him for "assaulting an officer" because they got his blood on their uniforms when they nearly beat him to death.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Pigs out of uniform

[SvnLyrBrto]

https://www.npr.org/2014/09/12... [npr.org]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/... [thedailybeast.com]

The charges for the bleeding on the uniforms were actually destruction of public property... one each for the four cops he bled on while they were beating him. And he wasn't *just* an unresisting victim. He was in jail in the first place on a totally false charge, invented from whole cloth (In reality: Driving While Black.). The cops invented a fictional warrant against him as pretext for arresting him in the first place, beat the living hell out of him, and then destroyed the videotape from the camera covering the room where they did so.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. The HK officers have shown incredible amount of restraint despite the violence. If such an event were to happen in the US, the officers would be shooting real bullets on the very first day.

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[Anonymous Coward]

This is correct. Just check out the LA Riots. Dozens were shot and killed. National Guard was sent in. People complain about one lady in HK getting an eye injury, and that she may lose an eye. Yet look what happened to the Yellow Jackets in France? DOZENS have lost an eye due to rubber bullets. To combat the Yellow Jackets, the French police has also used much more tear gas. In the Western media, almost NO one will state that these thugs who are violently protesting are rioting. Yet you find MANY

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[Slonak Nana]

There are gun controls in Hong Kong. In US there could be firearms used on both sides.

Stop comparing the use of force in US and the use of force in Hong Kong as the 2 scenarios are completely different. In the early stage of protest the protestors are using only shields made up of foam boards and umbrellas where the police use tear gases and rubber bullets, short gun grounds that aim to the heads of the protestors.

The police just attack the protestors without following standard police protocols. Some po

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[Anonymous Coward]

This is some more BS that the Western media has largely tried to present, that the protests were "peaceful" and that everyone is innocent. Although THEY even don't say that the early stages of the "protests", were just people using foam board shields, and umbrellas. Obviously large portions were peaceful, OTHER parts were not, and were clearly rioting. June 12 is the FIRST day when the rioting started. Do you call throwing bricks, bottles and long spear like objects peaceful? Do you call trying to char

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[Agripa]

"police began after officers stopped wearing badge numbers on their uniforms when they attended protests"

Hearabouts someone wearing a police uniform without wearing the proper badge would be considered not to be a police officer but rather impersonating a police officer. Anyone engaging in such activity and cause a "ruckus" could be killed with little to no consequence.

In the US and Canada it is routine for police to remove or cover any external identification when they want to remain unidentified for purposes of denying standing in court. If they act illegally or unconstitutionally, then the requirement that they be identified in court cannot be met.

Goals of waving American flags

[LaughingRadish]

This practice of waving American flags in Hong Kong is strange. I hear noises along the lines of protesters trying to force the government out and institute a new one that will apply for Hong Kong to become a territory of the United States. Won't that be a grand can of worms?

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[Retired ICS]

Is there a suitable despotic dictator that the United States can appoint so that in a few years they can go to war in order to get rid of him? Bin Laden, Sadam Hussien, and most of the others that we know about are all used up. Are there more being gussied up with lipstick on pigs waiting in the wings?

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[sysrammer]

Is there a suitable despotic dictator that the United States can appoint so that in a few years they can go to war in order to get rid of him? Bin Laden, Sadam Hussien, and most of the others that we know about are all used up. Are there more being gussied up with lipstick on pigs waiting in the wings?

We can discuss this in 2024 after the 22nd amendment gets overridden.

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[Slonak Nana]

I wonder if the Chinese communist party actually is the bigger can of worms. Perhaps the new can of worms could serve a check and balance for the old worms ?

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[Cederic]

I can't see the US being stupid enough to try and take over Hong Kong (the island itself, let alone Kowloon and the New Territories). China would flatten the place with artillery before allowing that.

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[burningcpu]

It's likely intended to promote support among 'everyday' patriotic Americans, with the goal of forcing our politicians' hands WRT their negotiations with China, regarding the matter. It's a smart tactic.

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[Admiral Krunch]

But in reality it just plays into the hand of China on the mainland. They control the media and it's all too easy to paint the protesters as being under foreign influence. That would be easy and true even without the backdrop of a trade war where America is already seen in a bad light inside China.

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[burningcpu]

That's an interesting observation, and I'm sure there's truth to it. From what I've seen and read, most people in mainland China are quite happy with how the society operates, and they don't seem to like airing 'internal' matters publicly. I'm sure many think any public protesting is shameful.