Justice Secretary Paul Lam on Wednesday said the government will not be taking up suggestions to ban certain social media platforms under Basic Law Article 23 national security legislation.

Submissions put forward under a public consultation exercise on the future laws include calls for Facebook and YouTube to be removed from the Hong Kong market, and for messaging apps such as Telegram and Signal to be banned because they are a "breeding ground for crime".

The suggestions were included by officials in a document listing some of the public's input.

Those behind the calls were anonymous.

Asked at a Legco meeting on Article 23 whether such bans are possible, Lam said he could categorically say that the government has no such plans.

"We're targeting people exploiting, abusing and misusing those tools to disseminate information or comments endangering national security, that's our target. We're not targeting social media," he said.

"Hong Kong has freedom of information and freedom of speech. That's enshrined in the Basic Law and the National Security Law. Hong Kong is an international city. In finance and other activities, we need freedom of information. This is our unique strength, we need to strengthen and safeguard such freedom."

In its summary of public views, the administration said it is considering making it an offence for anyone to knowingly obstruct a national security investigation.

The government is also looking at extending the maximum detention period for national security suspects who haven't been charged to 16 days, instead of the current 48 hours.

Meanwhile, the authorities will consider applying a heavier penalty to those endangering national security if they do so while colluding with foreign powers.

At the Legco meeting, Federation of Trade Unions lawmaker Stanley Ng questioned the government's plan to consider including a “public interest” defence to a proposed new law to protect state secrets.

In response, Lam said while nothing trumps national security, cases involving the disclosure of state secrets should be looked at individually.

"The public interest defence is there for us to decide whether the public interest behind disclosing state secrets in a case outweighs non-disclosure. The threshold for a public interest defence will be high and the burden of proof rests on the person trying to invoke this defence," he said.

Lam said authorities will try to finalise the national security bill and submit it to Legco as soon as possible.

Separately, the SAR government condemned a report by Bloomberg that said social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube would be banned under Article 23 legislation.

"The fake news as published by Bloomberg has undermined its trustworthiness and credibility in the media sector. We request Bloomberg to ensure that future reports concerning the Basic Law Article 23 legislation would be fair and just to avoid any further misunderstanding by its readers," a government spokesman said in a statement.
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Last updated: 2024-03-06 HKT 19:59