HK takes notes from UK beefed-up security bill

Authorities will refer to the wide coverage of Britain's national security bill when designing local legislation for Basic Law Article 23, Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung says.

Tang, on a blog post yesterday, said the British bill covers a broad spectrum of spying activities, foreign intervention, sabotages, fake news and online behavior.

He said he noticed that British Home Secretary Priti Patel submitted a draft national security bill to parliament recently, which specifically mentioned security risks from foreign countries.

These range from espionage, foreign interference in the political system, sabotage, publication of false information and cyber operation, Tang said, adding Patel stated the bill is to "get ahead of this threat."

He said the UK bill includes a wide range of new offenses and several measures to restrict civil rights. Most of the proposed violations have extraterritorial effects, meaning regardless of the perpetrator's nationality or the location of the organization that committed them.

The UK proposed measures include a modernized approach to the offense of espionage, which includes obtaining or disclosing protected information, and expands espionage to include trade secrets used to benefit another country, Tang said.

He added that the UK plans to introduce a new regime that gives the government the power to impose restrictive measures on a person if he or she is believed to be involved in foreign threats.

Tang said authorities have been working on legislating Article 23 to fulfill the SAR government's constitutional responsibility and improve the national security law.

Apart from studying relevant national and local laws, the government will also refer to similar laws in other jurisdictions to formulate a proposal that suits the situation in Hong Kong.

He also criticized foreign countries for holding double standards to smear Hong Kong's national security law, while setting broad and strict laws in their own countries.

"Maintaining national security is the right and duty of every country and the enactment of national security law is an international practice," Tang said.

"Despite this, the United States and other Western countries have been deliberately denigrating and making false accusations about the enactment and implementation of Hong Kong national security law."

Overseas countries also demonized the enactment of Article 23, Tang said, adding: "In fact, they have also enacted national security laws and made legal amendments from time to time."

He called on all sectors, especially foreign politicians, not to make double-standard accusations.

leone.xue@singtaonewscorp.com