Opinion | Hong Kong’s laws need to evolve as protests enter the digital realm

The extradition bill protests in Hong Kong have provided no shortage of remarkable visuals that will remain etched in our collective memory. Less visibly, but no less importantly, the conflict that has roiled the city is also playing out in the digital realm.

Protesters made judicious use of encrypted messaging apps to communicate not only with one another, but also with the media. They also used local peer-to-peer communication technology such as Apple’s Airdrop to anonymously send messages and plans to those in their immediate vicinity, entirely avoiding reliance on any communication infrastructure that could possibly be monitored.

Knowledge of how to use technology to avoid detection also extended to when not to use it — protesters stopped using Octopus cards and turned to single-use MTR tickets instead, to leave no digital trail. A minority also chose to use digital tools in a much more aggressive fashion. It was reported that 600 police officers had been “doxxed”, meaning their personal information was spread online. The police issued take-down requests to the websites to scrub the internet of the leaked personal details.

Those in favour of the bill (or opposed to the protests) also made use of the digital realm to advance their cause. A large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Telegram, the encrypted messaging app used by protesters, was launched on June 12 at the same time the protests began.