If you are unsuccessful at first, give it a try, try again, the old maxim follows, and apparently this advice is double if you are Facebook, a company that has tried a number of times at this time. cartoons to install high-capacity Internet conduit between California and Hong Kong only to be continually frustrated by the U.S. government.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had rejected plans for the latest iteration of its proposed cable, thanks in large part to growing pressure from U.S. national security officials who are concerned that Hong Kong’s legal autonomy is increasingly in jeopardy. .
“Due to the constant concerns of the U.S. government about direct communications links between the United States and Hong Kong, we have decided to withdraw our FCC application,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement. “We look forward to working with all parties to reconfigure the system to meet the concerns of the U.S. government.”
Although Facebook told the U.S. Federal Communications Commission that it had withdrawn its latest construction application for the Hong Kong-Americas project (also known as HKA), not the first time the social media giant has struggled to establish a fiber-optic cable connection between the two regions. In September 2020, the Trump administration put the kibosh in a separate plan it established between Facebook and Google to build an 8,000-mile-long broadband cable between Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
That project, known as the Pacific Light Cable Network (PLCN), was first proposed in 2016 and was built entirely with the intention of connecting the United States to Taiwan and the Philippines, as well as Hong Kong. , before it stopped. Currently, builders are still asking for permission to activate existing data links to put the cable online.
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As pro-democracy protests made a rage in Hong Kong in 2020, the Chinese government repressed the special administrative region by implementing new regulations on the Internet as part of an exploration us national security law. In July, technical experts, including Google, Facebook and Twitter, announced that they had suspended the processing of user data requests under Hong Kong law. police agencies due in large part to is concerned that data sharing could be a violation of human rights.
“We believe that freedom of expression is a fundamental human right and we support the right of people to express themselves without fear for their safety or other repercussions,” a Facebook spokeswoman said. dit at the time.