Why we closed our Hong Kong exit

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On July 1, 2020, the Hong Kong national security law came into effect. In fact, the central Chinese government imposed it upon the autonomous territory without any input from Hong Kong's local legislature. Not only does this draconian legislation destroy important civil rights and Hong Kong's constitutional order, it seriously threatens Geph users' privacy and security. This makes Hong Kong no longer a viable jurisdiction to operate a Geph exit node in, leading to our decision to close down the New Territories, Hong Kong exit node.

A few of the most problematic articles in the security legislation include:

• Article 9, mandating that the HKSAR government take ill-defined action to "strengthen its work on safeguarding national security and prevention of terrorist activities", including through regulation of the Internet. This exposes Hong Kong to the possibility of Great Firewall-like Internet restrictions under the guise of "safeguarding national security", an all-too-common excuse for restricting Internet freedom.
• Article 43, which bestows sweeping powers on the newly formed Committee for Safeguarding National Security (CSNS) for investigating "cases [...] endangering national security." Those powers include compelling service providers to provide unspecified assistance (43.4) and give up unspecified information (43.7). Under Article 43, we at Geph can easily imagine a scenario where we are legally compelled to betray our own users and contravene our own privacy policy if we should continue operating our Hong Kong exit server.
• Article 38, stipulating that "This Law shall apply to offenses under this Law committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the Region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the Region." This absurd inclusion legally subjects any action happening anywhere on the planet to punishment by Chinese and Hong Kong authorities. This of course includes Estonian companies like Gephyra OÜ, Geph’s registered legal entity.
• Article 65, which states that "The power of interpretation of this Law shall be vested in the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress." In other words, the Communist PRC government gets to decide what the law covers and how it should be enforced. Since they are not known for consistent adherence to the rule of law, we will never be certain of what is safe to operate on Hong Kong servers and what is not. This makes it absolutely crucial for us to immediately discontinue any Geph traffic through Hong Kong.

Our team at Geph will continually strive to maintain and improve a secure gateway to free information.