For the following decades, the stringent control over public processions and meetings was relaxed incrementally until 1990s when it was brought in line with human rights standards.

Upon Hong Kong handover, the amendments in the 1990s were decreed "not adopted as the laws of the HKSAR" by the NPCSC of China and therefore reverted.

The 1948 Ordinance transplanted the Public Order Act 1936 in the United Kingdom and the binding over procedure in the criminal code of Straits Settlements.

[6] In October 1996, Democratic Party's legislator James To introduced a private member's bill to amend section 6 of the POO to remove the power of the Commissioner of Police to control the extent to which music or speech might be amplified.

The PRC considered the Bill of Rights Ordinance and the 1995 POO to contravene the Hong Kong Basic Law.

Therefore, on 23 February 1997, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress passed a resolution that under Article 160 of the Basic Law that major amendments to the POO would be scrapped.

[8] Following up the NPC's decision, the Office of the Chief Executive Designate proposed amendments to the POO, together with the Societies Ordinance and issued a hastily prepared consultation document "Civil Liberty and Social Order" to the public in April 1997.

The proposed amendments created widespread criticisms that the future SAR government intended to restrict Hong Kong people's civil liberties.

The colonial Hong Kong government even distribute a commentary criticising the proposals in unusual manner.

The Hong Kong Provisional Legislative Council enacted the new version of the POO on 14 June 1997, and it came into force on 1 July 1997.

The protest, served as a reminder of the Government's decision to seek for re-interpretation of the Basic Law after the right of abode rulings in 1999, received general public and media sympathy and was viewed by some as an orderly, non-violent and non-provoking act of civil disobedience.

Due to large pressure from society, the Secretary for Justice Elsie Leung decided not to prosecute the student leaders and other protestors.

[12] The first case that the HKSAR government decide to prosecute protesters for violation of the notification system was launched on 9 May 2002 against veteran protestor Leung Kwok-hung of the April Fifth Action and two other student activists was charged with organising an unauthorised public assembly or assisting in organising one.

Magistrate Partick Li held that requirement for the notification system was reasonable for maintaining ordre public of Hong Kong society.

[16] They also remarked in dicta that the norm of "protection of the rights and freedoms of others" was too wide and did not satisfy the legal certainty requirement.

Justice Bokhary PJ dissented, noting in his judgment that the whole statutory scheme should be struck down except the entitlement to notification.

[17] The government was criticised for politically motivated prosecute a few high-profile protesters as Leung Kwok-hung was the veteran activist and a leader of a radical political group and the student activists were the prominent members of the Hong Kong Federation of Students which is a vocal critic of government policy.

[19] Two legislators from the radical political group People Power, Wong Yuk-man and Albert Chan were convicted under the POO for organising and taking part in an unlawful assembly in the evening after the 1 July Protest in 2011 where Wong urged hundreds of People Power supporters to vow to march to the Government House.