Three years ago, Hong Kong erupted as a youth-led anti-corruption movement called the Umbrella Revolution took to the streets; now, a chapter of the Extinction Rebellion movement has launched in HK.
From following their grandchildren around at kindergarten to hanging slanderous banners outside their homes to hacking their email to sending funeral wreaths to their doors, the leaders of Hong Kong's anticorruption Occupy Central movement face persistent, ongoing reprisals for their political activity.
After the brutal eviction of protesters from the Mong Kok protest camp by Hong Kong police, the protesters came back strong, surging into the streets and beating back the police lines, preservering in the face of batons and pepper-spray.
The Add Oil project lets anyone in the world write a message of support to Hong Kong's protesters, which is then beamed in 16' tall letters on the sides of buildings near the protests.
The protesters accuse the police of working with the thugs, who wore masks as they attacked the encampments; the violence has led to postponement of the planned talks between the Umbrella Revolution leaders and the Hong Kong administration.
The protesters are dependent on mobile apps to coordinate their huge, seemingly unstoppable uprising, and someone — maybe the Politburo, maybe a contractor — has released virulent Ios and Android malware into their cohort, and the pathogens are blazing through their electronic ecosystem.
Hong Kong's democratic uprising has been a long masterclass in high-tech protest tactics (and the hits keep coming).
The millions of Hong Kong people participating in the #612strike uprising are justifiably worried about state retaliation, given the violent crackdowns on earlier uprisings like the Umbrella Revolution and Occupy Central; they're also justifiably worried that they will be punished after the fact.
Hong Kong's previous mass-protest uprisings — 2014's Occupy Central, 2016's Umbrella Revolution — were ultimately smashed by the state through a combination of violent suppression and electronic surveillance, greatly aided by the hierarchical structure of the protest movements (which made it possible to decapitate them by arresting their leaders) and their internal divisions and infighting.
Hong Kong's 2016 Umbrella Revolution saw weeks of mass protests over a change to nomination rules for the city's ruling council, in which the central government in Beijing arrogated to itself the right to decide who could be on the ballot (Boss Tweed: "I don't care who gets to do the voting, so long as I get to do the nominating").
Elected representatives of Hong Kong's Youngspiration party deliberately mangled their oaths of office, refusing to swear loyalty to China (instead swearing to Hong Kong) and pronouncing China as "Shina," a term dating from the Japanese occupation of China (they also held up a banner that said "Hong Kong is not China").
2014's Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong was an uprising over the Chinese government's announcement that it would exercise a veto over who could stand for election to the Hong Kong legislature (as Boss Tweed said, "I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating.").
Backslash — an "art/design" project from NYU Interactive Technology Program researchers Xuedi Chen and Pedro G. C. Oliveira — is a set of high-tech tools for protesters facing down a "hyper-militarized," surviellance-heavy state adversary, including a device to help protesters keep clear of police kettles; a jammer to foil Stingray mobile-phone surveillance; a mesh-networking router; a "personal cloud" that tries to mirror photos and videos from a protest to an offsite location; and tools for covertly signalling situational reports to other protesters.
Parties unknown have hacked websites belonging to various sites linked with Hong Kong's Occupy Central/Umbrella Revolution movements, inserting nasty malware onto them that attempts to take over readers' computers.
The data were extracted from the excellent Hong Kong Transparency Report as well as transparency reports from various online service providers' global transparency reports from 2010 onward– its shows a steep increase in surveillance requests, and hints that the HK government's stats omit a large slice of its activities.
The massive, student led protests in Hong Kong were sparked by the fact that Beijing's political and economic elites get to choose the candidates in its elections ("I don't care who does the electing, so long as I get to do the nominating" -Boss Tweed) — but is this really any different from America's big money primaries, where corporate elites can spend unlimited sums fixing the race?
