Swedish tech giant pulls out of Hong Kong after breaking into activists’ phones

蘋果日報 2020/09/24 19:07


A Stockholm-based company that supplies data-extraction technology to law enforcement and government agencies has pulled its business out of Hong Kong, joining a growing list of foreign businesses that have evacuated since Beijing imposed a national security law on the city since July, Bloomberg reports.
Micro Systemation AB would no longer “supply solutions” to the cyber security and technology crime bureau of the police or any other government agencies in Hong Kong, said deputy executive officer Mike Dickinson in an email to his company.
MSAB’s technology was employed to break into the mobile phone of activist Joshua Wong during his arrest last October, according to court documents submitted by the police. A leaked proposal from July also showed that MSAB was in line for additional business from the Hong Kong government.
MSAB’s latest decision was tied to the United States' move to strip Hong Kong of its special trading status on July 14, Dickinson said. He added that Trump’s executive order on Hong Kong has impacted the company’s legal entity and presence in the U.S.
The company also withdrew from China earlier this year, due to changes in “regulatory regimes and restrictions” related to export control laws. Bloomberg reported that MSAB received a “huge order” for its data extraction product from the Chinese government since 2013.
“Having reviewed how this could impact our business operations in the region, we have decided to make the strategic decision to cease all business operations in Hong Kong and China,” said Dickinson.
Separately, Israel-based firm Cellebrite is also facing pressure to stop providing data-extraction technology to the Hong Kong government. Eitay Mack, a human rights lawyer, has filed a court petition to halt Cellebrite’s exports to Hong Kong.
“Unfortunately,” Mack wrote in an appeal to Israeli government ministries, “the services that Cellebrite has previously provided to the Hong Kong police are no longer legitimate and legal.”
MSAB possesses the technology to break into iPhones and is likely dependent on its business connections in the U.S., digital technology consultant Sang Young told Apple Daily. MSAB would be willing to lose its Hong Kong business so as to avoid American sanctions, he added.
MSAB was contacted for comment but did not immediately respond.
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