The notion that Hong Kong police are now authorized to randomly stop people on the street and demand passwords to their devices is “false and misleading,” Hong Kong Secretary for Secretary Chris Tang (shown above) felt obliged to say after the government’s latest National Security Law decree was reported (Hong Kong Free Press, March 26, 2026).
Duly noted. Is that it? Do the police and other officials nevertheless have the power, on the basis of zero evidence of wrongdoing, to force Hongkongers and travelers to Hong Kong to give passwords or other means of access to their devices or face steep fines and imprisonment?
[Tang] said that police must apply for a court warrant providing “national security reasons” before requesting people suspected of endangering national security to hand over mobile phone passwords.
However, Acting Secretary for Justice Horace Cheung said in LegCo that under some “extreme, exceptional” circumstances, police can demand mobile phone passwords without court warrants if the suspected national security offence was so “imminent and obvious” that police did not have time to apply for warrants.
The officials’ remarks came after the government gazetted amendments to the “implementation rules” of the Beijing-imposed national security law on Monday, introducing the password requirement alongside granting several new powers to authorities.
Under the new rules, police can require people under national security investigations to provide passwords or decrypt their electronic devices. Police can also compel anyone believed to know of the password or the decryption method of a device under investigation to disclose such information.
Failure to do so can be punished by up to a one-year jail term and a HK$100,000 fine.
Hong Kong judges will not hesitate to provide warrants whenever asked on any slender grounds to permit police to demand passwords. “Possible threat to national security” is a low bar.
Also, the “extreme, exceptional” circumstances that Horace Cheung says allow officials to demand access to your smartphone without a warrant will in practice turn out to be not so extreme and not so exceptional.
Nor will any customs officer at a Hong Kong airport be pausing to secure a warrant if he wants to inspect the phone of a visitor from Taiwan.
If you’re an ordinary Hong Kong citizen walking down the street and a cop demands the pass code to your iPhone, you won’t be protected by Chris Tang’s statement that it is “false and misleading” to suggest that a police officer would ever randomly do this.
Anyway, it will be easy enough to explain that you were not stopped randomly, that you had uttered some word or made some sign hinting at the possibility that you are a risk to national security.
