"We're afraid of having our data tracked," one female protester told me.
She said that this ticket-buying was't as prevalent during the 2014 Umbrella Movement. Five years on, however, people are more wary & aware.
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There is usually never a line at the train ticketing machines. Judging from an overheard convo, it appears that people are reluctant to use their rechargeable Octopus cards for fear of leaving a paper trail of them having been present at the protest.
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This raises a lot of interesting questions about cash vs. cashless societies, and how in times of protest people may drastically adjust their usual economic behaviour.
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For additional context, since this photo doesn't show the whole scene: the line at every ticket machine stretched back 10+ meters.
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Using data from cashless, prepaid Octopus cards to track down suspects is not new.
As early as 2010, HK police used such data to trace a murder suspect, as seen in this China Daily story
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In this mentioned case above, it was not murder, but an acid attack.
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And tracking data on metro/transit cards is not just done in Hong Kong or China. Way back in 2001, US authorities used MetroCard data to trace, arrest, and indict a murder suspect.
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Prosecutors said this marked the first murder case where a MetroCard was key evidence, according to this New York Post story \
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Here is the full write-up:
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