In Hong Kong, protesters draw lasers to blur cameras

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Will next-gen protests end up looking like lightsaber fights? This is suggested by videos showing Hong Kong protesters pointing lasers at police. Afraid of seeing the same widespread surveillance system appear on the island as in mainland China, they try to dazzle the police and jam their cameras.

On Saturday July 28, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers demonstrated in the Sheung Wan business district against the government. As night fell, clashes broke out between demonstrators and police, who exchanged projectiles and tear gas canisters. Protesters also pointed blue and green laser beams at police, irradiating clouds of gas, a practice "out of science fiction movies" according to some internet users.

"The protesters want to prevent the police from photographing their faces and identifying them"

Photo of green laser pointers used during an unauthorized protest in Yuen Long district on July 27, shared on Twitter.

"Protesters spotted someone taking photos from the Liaison Office [the Chinese administration's branch in Hong Kong, editor's note], so they aimed laser pointers at the camera", reports this Twitter account of Hong Kong protesters on July 21.

In this visual shared in a chat group on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, we see how to quickly make a balaclava from a tied T-shirt.

On the Internet, there is even an e-shop specially dedicated to Hong Kong demonstrators, where various equipment is sold to conceal one's face: masks, balaclavas, but not yet laser pointers.

An effective technique to disrupt the shot

Photo montage taken from an experiment to determine the effectiveness of laser pointers in temporarily neutralizing camera sensors. Credit: Michael Naimark, 2002.

In a detailed blog post published in 2002, Michael Naimark, an American artist and researcher in virtual reality and digital arts, detailed an experiment which showed that a laser pointer, even of low intensity and placed several tens of meters from a camera, can greatly disrupt the shot.

This technique can also damage the sensors of the cameras and the demonstrators seem to have taken note of it, as shown in the message below, published on the Hong Kong forum LIHKG.

"I heard that camera sensors can be damaged easily if a laser beam is aimed directly at them. To the brothers who have green lasers you can try to aim at the person [policeman] holding the camera", writes this user on July 28 on LIHKG.

In Hong Kong, a Chinese-style surveillance system?

But on social networks, Internet users also claim that the lasers would be used to jam facial recognition systems used by the police, an advanced video analysis method allowing live and automatic monitoring and identification of a large group. of people.

“Hong Kong protesters are using lasers to thwart Chinese facial recognition technology. Wow,” tweeted American political scientist Ian Bremmer.

This technology is particularly widely used in China, where the state monitors millions of people via a network of surveillance cameras and assigns them a "social rating".

Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous special administrative region maintaining a separate government and legal system. The policies put in place in mainland China are therefore not necessarily applied there.

"Police are not technologically advanced enough to do facial recognition per se"

In this video posted on July 30 on Twitter, we see a policeman on the left holding a small tripod camera intended to film the demonstrators. This equipment would be the standard device of the Hong Kong police, according to the Hong Kong blogger "Hong Kong Hermit" interviewed by our editorial staff. In the middle of the image, another policeman is aiming at the one who is filming him with a flashlight to disrupt the shot.

"The government seems to want to imitate China"

Protests turned into a movement against Chinese influence

For more than four months, many Hong Kongers have been demonstrating against their government and denouncing a rapprochement that they consider worrying with China. On June 16, 2019, two million demonstrators took to the streets, more than 25% of the population.

In February, a proposal to amend an extradition law, since suspended, set fire to the powder. It would have allowed people who committed crimes in mainland China to be sent back there for trial. Members of civil society then denounced the endangerment of independence and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, who would risk being prosecuted by the Chinese judicial system, deemed to be tied to the communist political apparatus.

This article was written by Liselotte Mas (@liselottemas).

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