Beijing has cast a lengthening shadow over Hong Kong ever since it returned to the loving embrace of the mainland in 1997. And now China’s slow strangling of Hong Kong’s freedoms has moved towards the Internet.

One rather famous company that once promised to “do no evil” may not be living up to its principles after recent reports indicated that, in the first six months of the year, Hong Kong authorities made some 370 “information requests” to Google, half the number from Japan and second only to authoritarian Singapore.

Google says it ONLY approved 48 percent of Hong Kong’s requests for data info, but 48 percent is a lot. Can there really be that many legitimate reasons to violate Internet privacy?

China is, of course, globally famous for censorship and has been highly successful in bullying search engines into obeying their edicts if they want to operate in China.

Under the “one-country-two-systems” formula, Hong Kong was guaranteed the right to certain freedoms, such as freedom of the press.

As with every other Beijing promise however, it seem those guarantees came with certain “socialist characteristics.”

We here at NMA fully support search engines cooperating with governments to track down creeps or criminals, but the fact that data requests have increased significantly after recent protests and expressions of dissatisfaction with Beijing’s rule have nothing to do with each other, right?

Hong Kong’s people mostly trust, Google, but tripping down that slippery Chinese censorship slope could erode that trust forever.

Officials use buzzwords like “crime,” “porn,” “security” and “safety” to try and convince us prying eyes are needed, but China’s track record shows their end game boils down to simple total control.

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