Google is no longer providing user data requested by authorities in Hong Kong, the company said on Friday. The company suspended its cooperation with Hong Kong authorities on user data requests when Beijing enacted a new national security law in the region in June, and it’s maintained that position ever since.
The Washington Post on Friday reported that Google told Hong Kong police on Thursday that, going forward, it won’t directly respond to user data requests and will instead redirect authorities to the Hong Kong–U.S. Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, which requires the involvement of the U.S. Justice Department and can take weeks or months.
A Google spokesperson declined to comment on the Washington Post report and declined to say whether Google’s new policy is permanent.
“We carefully review all requests for user data and push back on overly broad ones to protect our users’ privacy,” a Google spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.
China’s government enacted a sweeping national security law in Hong Kong on June 30 that granted authorities broad new powers over Hong Kong’s Internet and user data. Google was one of several companies, including Facebook and Twitter, that announced in the days following the enactment that they had stopped processing data requests from authorities while they reviewed the law. They cited concerns that the broad powers granted to authorities by the law might infringe on user data privacy and other civil liberties like free expression.
Google said in the statement Friday that authorities outside the U.S. can seek data “through diplomatic procedures.” The shift in Hong Kong means the U.S. tech giant is now treating Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, effectively the same as mainland China in terms of processing data requests.
The national security law has worsened the already strained relationship between the U.S. and China. Washington revoked Hong Kong’s special trade status with the U.S. after the law was enacted to signal that Washington no longer viewed Hong Kong as sufficiently autonomous from Beijing.
Between 2006 and 2009, Google ran a separate version of its search engine for users in mainland China under the domain name google.cn. Google China complied with Chinese government censorship rules until 2010, when it announced it was shutting down google.cn.
At that point, Google began redirecting mainland China users to the uncensored version of the search engine available in Hong Kong. In response, the Chinese government blocked access to Google and Google-affiliated applications like Gmail, Youtube, and Blogger under China’s “Great Firewall” of Internet controls, which denies mainland users access to many U.S.-based sites.
Google and other sites restricted on the mainland are accessible in Hong Kong. Google’s decision to stop directly responding to Hong Kong authorities’ data requests signals U.S. tech firms’ changing attitude toward data privacy and protections in Hong Kong.
