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The Essential Tool for Hong Kong Protesters? An Umbrella

153 points| baylearn | 6 years ago |bloomberg.com

55 comments

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[+] abbracadabbra|6 years ago|reply
> Chinese e-commerce sites like Taobao and AliExpress no longer sell them to customers in Hong Kong

Impressive coordination of public & private bureaucracies

[+] lvturner|6 years ago|reply
A cursory glance indicates I am perfectly able to buy an umbrella from Ali express in Hong Kong - didn't go all the way through the purchase however.

I do somewhat question the reliability of the source in this instance.

[+] _xnmw|6 years ago|reply
Maybe because they’re one and the same?
[+] __m|6 years ago|reply
Not really, it's more impressive to block whole countries (not just your own) to do business with Iran for example.
[+] dear|6 years ago|reply
Impressive coordination of public bureaucracies & state owned enterprises.
[+] terenceng2010|6 years ago|reply
Following the Be water thinking, ppl start to have no specific items or clothes to represent themselves now. So the essential tool would be the determination to live in this city with courage, hope, dignity and helping each other in a crisis created by no one but the government.

This government has lost all its credibility within a hundred day, which is impressive in a way I guess? I don’t think HK will be totally recovered when CCP continues to intervene. The damage has be made, and the scar will always be there.

[+] 77546throw|6 years ago|reply
>...and the scar will always be there.

Will it? I think over time, people will forget.

When the British colonized Hong Kong, they were especially brutal to the protestors. During the protests in the late 1960s, the British controlled police killed over 50 protesters.

Yet today, the protesters are wishing for the British to intervene.

[+] paulcarroty|6 years ago|reply
Remember 2014, Kyiv, Maidan. We actively used a push-to-talk mobile app Zello. Cheap used mobile phone, burner sim-card without id, and you're on the way. Also many people used whatsapp, Facebook was very liberal to UA protesters.

"Winter on fire", Netflix, highly recommend.

Of course times changing, and heard now Zello is affiliated with Russian government.

[+] WilTimSon|6 years ago|reply
Yeah, but there are new options. I've seen Telegram and Briar both listed as options that the Hong Kong protesters have used. When a company sells out to the state, it's time to switch to another one. Briar, in particular, was made specifically for dissidents and protesters.
[+] vnchr|6 years ago|reply
Are there any interesting startups specifically focused on protest technology?
[+] ignoramous|6 years ago|reply
Not protest-tech per se, but Alphabet's Jigsaw [0] has an impressive collection of opensource tools they themselves built.

And the usual suspects (a few are not startups): the guardianproject [1], lantern-vpn [2], the tor-project [3], freedom-box [4], matrix [5], GNU Jami [6], letsencrypt, grapheneos [7], signal [8], freedom.press [9] ivpn / pia / mulluvad et al.

[0] https://jigsaw.google.com

[1] https://guardianproject.info

[2] https://getlantern.org

[3] https://torproject.org

[4] https://freedomboxfoundation.org

[5] https://matrix.org

[6] https://jami.net

[7] https://grapheneos.org

[8] https://signal.org

[9] https://freedom.press

[+] idlewords|6 years ago|reply
Protest is not a technology problem
[+] secfirstmd|6 years ago|reply
Part of the inspiration for us building Umbrella: a free, open source app with advice on how activists can deal with protests, arrests, surveillance and communication. It's available in multiple languages, including Chinese. (More information at https://www.secfirst.org)

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/umbrella-security/id14537153...

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.secfirst.u...

[+] pcmaffey|6 years ago|reply
To be remembered as the Umbrella Revolution.
[+] isostatic|6 years ago|reply
Terrible GDPR page - not clear if you’re answering “yes” or “no”

Why do websites insist on the most terrible custom designs? What’s wrong with “input type=checkbox”?

[+] capableweb|6 years ago|reply
The "not clear if you’re answering “yes” or “no”" part is the entire point of the deliberately poor design. See https://www.darkpatterns.org/ for more examples
[+] tikumo|6 years ago|reply
Next year on AliExpress, weaponized umbrella's
[+] crystalsforme|6 years ago|reply
Yeah, they will shock the user if opened in a protest area.
[+] avar|6 years ago|reply
> “If you compare the umbrella with the weapon the others are using to attack us, the umbrella is nothing for that. Actually, umbrellas are really easily broken and we only use it to protect ourselves.”

Are umbrellas in China just really light and flimsy? I've had a lot of umbrellas heavy and sturdy enough to do some serious damage if I were so inclined.

[+] boyadjian|6 years ago|reply
All those people who protest ... They protest against what ? In France, we have the "Gilets Jaunes", who also protest, there is also the young people who protest against climate change. They protest, and they go nowhere ...
[+] isaaafc|6 years ago|reply
The whole movement started with the proposal of an extradition bill by the government which allows anyone in Hong Kong deemed guilty by the Chinese government (note: HK is not China yet) to be extradited to China for trial, even foreigners. Needless to say, people protested because the Chinese judicial system is a total joke (if you don't agree with this, I'm not going to argue with you, but the whole comment would be meaningless).

People protested peacefully at first, but the government didn't give in and sent the police and triads to beat up citizens instead. Many things happened since then, mainly involving police brutality, misconduct, and collusion with triads and the Communist regime (like allegedly deploying Chinese police and the People's Liberation Army disguised as HK police). Therefore, now it has become a protest for 5 demands, namely:

1. Complete withdrawal of the said bill (now it has been "promised" by the Chief Executive Carrie Lam, but given the track record of her people will only believe it when they see it)

2. Revoke the riot definition of the protests

3. Release and cancel all the charges on people arrested for this movement

4. An independent commission to investigate police brutality and misconduct

5. True universal suffrage on both the CE and the legislative council

[+] charles_f|6 years ago|reply
So instead, they should just sit there nicely and be swallowed into the largest communist police state in the world, a country notoriously[0] less free than the current government[1]?

> They protest against what

I'm guessing it's pretty clear, HK is against being reincorporated into mainland. Gilet jaune seems to be against the direction of law making in current French government (namely, tax the rich less and the poor more). The "young people" for more actions against pollution.

> They protest, and they go nowhere ...

What do you suggest they do instead, if they are not fine with that? You're protesting against them on an online forum, this is so much better.

Protests have an actual effect on policy making[3], if only to rally people and express the vox populi, especially when said people doesn't have another to express itself than casting a general paper that gives a name, not an intent, into a box, with very long periodicity ; or don't have that luxury (e.g. Hong Kong in that case)

[0] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2019/china

[1] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2019/hong-kong

[2] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/dshoag/Documents/Political%20...

/edit: fixing a url/

[+] xwolfi|6 years ago|reply
Honestly, right now, the "unfairness of life" is the closest to a coherent message I can interpret from their "movement".

It was really a tense and passionate debate 2 months ago, but now many of us just roll our eyes at the latest news, like when they shave people who clean the streets, burn an MTR station, cry in a foreign country they need to be "freed", and the like...