The respected commentator Andrew Sheng recently observed that around the world, each leading international finance center has a set of robust national security laws in place in order to underpin the stability and business confidence valued by those processing numerous, major financial transactions. He noted that New York, London, Singapore and Tokyo have long covered this requirement but, until July 1 of this year, Hong Kong lacked a modern, comprehensive national security law regime. Now, Hong Kong’s National Security Law has filled this void.

We know that the new National Security Law has generated significant commentary and that coming from the United States is overwhelmingly — we could say, tremendously — critical. This prompts one to recall the value of comparative analysis.

As it happens, America can lay claim to having the world’s most extensive regime for protecting national security. Accordingly, it presents some particularly apt material to study as we consider the new National Security Law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

America passed its first national security laws around 220 years ago, very shortly after the US was created: a robust start. Over time, a comprehensive set of strict national security statutes (combined with many relevant executive orders) have followed. Coverage was stoutly ramped up very soon after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the US. A host of new national security powers were then created. Marketing was not forgotten. The official name of a pivotal new law was arranged so as to produce the acronym the USA Patriot Act. Still more national security laws have been passed since.

Very recently, Gary Hart, a former Democratic senator from Colorado and former candidate to be US president, penned a New York Times article revealing that there are at least 100 documents that authorize the use, by the US president, of extraordinary, national emergency executive powers. They have accumulated over many decades. They are not subject to judicial or congressional checks. These powers, Hart says, are believed to cover surveillance, home intrusion, arrest without warrant, and the suspension of habeas corpus, among other things. In March, US President Donald Trump noted that “I have the right to do a lot of things that people don’t even know about”.

America can lay claim to having the world’s most extensive regime for protecting national security. Accordingly, it presents some particularly apt material to study as we consider the new National Security Law in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Very recently that “right” has been on display in Portland, Oregon, where Washington-authorized federal agents have moved in with such vigor against local protesters that the former acting director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Sandweg, has called these agents President Trump’s “goon squad”. Similar, muscular visits to other US cities are promised.

In sum, it seems the US president is exceptionally well-equipped to protect national security — but how about key US national security institutions, like the CIA?

Yahoo News recently reported that Trump signed a sweeping, secret authorization, in 2018, known as a “presidential finding”, giving the CIA enhanced powers to undertake cyberattacks directed against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. These powers are not just to gather information — they allow the launching of offensive disruptive attacks against electricity and water-supply systems, for example. According to this report, the CIA may “more easily authorize its own covert cyber operations, rather than requiring … approval from the White House”.

Professor Candace Rondeaux, of Arizona State University, subsequently warned against jumping to conclusions about the CIA abusing these powers. She also confirmed, however, that the essence of the story is not disputed; that the powers have likely been used dozens of times; and that the track record of the CIA restraining itself (for example, with respect to the use of lethal drones and torture) has not “always turned out well”.

Meanwhile, the US Justice Department has been busy. A federal indictment against two Chinese nationals accused of extensive hacking in the US (from China) was unsealed (that is, made public) in July. There are several interesting points worth considering here.

First, the accused are based in China. The US normally does not allow trials in absentia; the accused are unlikely to visit America and extradition is not possible. So almost certainly, there will never be a trial. Presumably the indictment was made public to act as a deterrent and also as part of the Trump administration’s conspicuously aggressive, Sinophobic reelection strategy.

Next, one of the most frequently derided provisions in Hong Kong’s new National Security Law is Article 38, which applies the National Security Law to someone who is not an HKSAR permanent resident; who is located outside the HKSAR; and who commits an offense under the National Security Law from outside of Hong Kong.

A number of commentators, not least in the US, have suggested that Article 38 attempts to deploy an almost foolish or laughable overreach. Yet this sort of extraterritorial scope is exactly what underpins the application of the US laws, in China — to alleged hacking all done in China — in the federal indictment just noted. That indictment acutely confirms why Article 38 is needed and what its role is. It closes off an obvious loophole, especially in an age when so much — including so much harm — can be done from remote locations, using the internet. What would be clearly foolish is not to have an Article 38 deterrent.

And if we need any further reminders of how the US uses offshore self-empowerment with uncommon passion, recall Julian Assange in London and Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver, each the subject of intense US extraterritorial attention.

Is it still possible (within the cloudburst of American criticism) to take some of the less-shrill criticism directed at the National Security Law seriously? Perhaps. But even then, you need to accept that almost all this commentary is offered on the basis of “do as I say — not do as I do”.

The author is a visiting professor in the Faculty of Law, the University of Hong Kong.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.