Hongkongers who refuse to provide passwords for smartphones or other electronic devices during national security investigations face up to a year in jail under legal changes that also allow police to question organisations if they have reasonable belief that they are overseas political groups or agents of foreign forces.<\/p>\n
The government said the new rules would not affect people\u2019s daily lives or how institutions normally operated.<\/p>\n
The amendments, gazetted on Monday, are the first substantial changes to the implementation rules of the national security law since it was imposed by Beijing in 2020. A minor technical amendment related to frozen property was made in 2023.<\/p>\n
A government spokesman said the revised rules would strengthen enforcement, improve crime prevention and assist in case investigations, while also addressing national security risks more promptly.<\/p>\n
He said the amendments aligned with the Basic Law, the city\u2019s mini-constitution, including human rights provisions, and would not affect the public\u2019s daily lives or the normal operation of institutions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe amendment rules set out stringent requirements by providing in detail under what circumstances the law enforcement authorities can exercise the powers; and incorporating mechanisms with the judiciary playing the gatekeeping role for various measures introduced by the amendment rules,\u201d the spokesman said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hongkongers who refuse to provide passwords for smartphones or other electronic devices during national security investigations face up…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":676316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[285061,199095,285063,8464,74159,14944,152335,50,58023,285060,285062,7207,46955,103],"class_list":["post-676315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-basic-law","tag-chief-executive-john-lee-ka-chiu","tag-committee-for-safeguarding-national-security","tag-hong-kong","tag-hong-kong-government","tag-national-security","tag-national-security-law","tag-news","tag-online-content","tag-online-messages","tag-passwords","tag-police","tag-web-hosting","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116279335113457717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/676315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/676316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=676315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=676315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}