It was a sweltering August Saturday in Hong Kong, and the authorities had just shut down one of the most important technologies in the city: the MTR, Hong Kong's uber-efficient subway system. So the protesters walked.
The demonstrators were in their 12th week of continuous action; they'd been marching, singing, occupying streets, forming human chains, confronting police. They started when the city's chief executive, Carrie Lam—a leader essentially handpicked by Beijing—introduced a bill that would allow Hong Kong's government to extradite suspects to mainland China for prosecution. Hong Kong is a “special administrative region” of China, with an independent judiciary and much wider freedoms than those found on the mainland. Fearing that the extradition law would lead to the further erosion of those freedoms, large numbers of protesters took to the streets starting in early June.
Now, nearly three months later, the bill had been suspended but not yet withdrawn. (That would come, but later.) And the protesters were feeling their strength, demanding an independent inquiry into police misconduct and universal suffrage.
The Hong Kong protesters managed to form a human barricade 30 miles long, surprising even themselves.
But on that Saturday, as we all ended up walking in the blazing sun, the protesters had a new target in their sights: “smart” lampposts equipped with sensors, cameras, and internet connections. Fifty had been installed in the city, a first batch of an expected 400, and the protesters were determined to take one down.
The government had said the smart lampposts would be used only for benign purposes—that they'd take air quality measurements and assist with traffic control, and would not collect facial ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
