Fergie's Tech Blog

Hong Kong: Domestic Surveillance No Big Deal?

George Wehrfritz writes in Newsweek:

Hong Kong, in all its money-worshipping glory, is utterly unlike the grim dictatorship George Orwell conjured up in his chilling novel "1984." Yet there is one similarity: the city's law enforcement agencies, legal experts warn, have embraced covert surveillance with the zeal of Orwell's all-seeing Thought Police.

Until a few months ago, in fact, Hong Kong cops, corruption-busters, immigration officers and customs agents routinely monitored cell-phone signals, read e-mail and bugged offices, homes and cars without judicial oversight. Then a judge declared that wiretaps and electronic surveillance lacked a legal basis under the city's mini-constitution, the Basic Law—triggering a new privacy debate.

posted by Fergie @ 4/12/2006 08:21:00 AM