­­Greetings, fellow privacy professionals.

I hope you are safe and well.

The biggest news in Hong Kong right now is the much-talked-about COVID-19 contact-tracing application that officially launched Monday. The LeaveHomeSafe app is an initiative from the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer, and there is a dedicated page with videos that explain how it works and how to access it. The South China Morning Post also posted a video of the app being used in everyday life to give the public a feel for how it would be used, as the initiative is currently voluntary. With the growing number of contact-tracing apps being released worldwide, a good summary can be found here, which also briefly outlines security and privacy issues related to that version of the app.

In other Asia-Pacific regional news, Australia’s Digital Transformation Agency has a consultation paper open, where the legislation aims to establish permanent governance arrangements and further enhance existing privacy and consumer safeguards for the Digital Identity system. The deadline for submission closes 18 Dec.

Another interesting development in Australia is there are plans to track COVID-19 through payment card records. Many questions come to mind, including the impact to the payment card providers that would need to provide the information in a secure and accurate way, how users will be notified of this during the process, retention periods, and many other implementation concerns.

With this in mind, I feel that one of the biggest hurdles will be the sending and receiving of the payment traffic and potential security and privacy risks in between. Even within the payment industry, there are hundreds of payment message types, and while there are developments underway to harmonize payment traffic with standards like ISO 20022, it is not currently widely used. There is a lot of interest in building common data platforms in general for more efficient and streamlined transfer of information and initiatives in Singapore for supply chain benefits through to South Korea to even Japan for transportation and military.

Finally, I would like to remind our Hong Kong IAPP members that registration is still open for the Hong Kong KnowledgeNet next Tuesday, 24 Nov. at HKT 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. This will be our final IAPP Hong Kong event for the calendar year. I am excited and honored that Privacy Commissioner Ada Chung will join me for a casual conversation, the first since she has taken office, to discuss her plans and predictions for 2021. We also plan to cover some other interesting topics as requested by members, such as the "Schrems II" impact on businesses in the region.

I look forward to you joining the final HK IAPP event for the year, and for those who have registered already, the Zoom links will be reaching your inbox shortly.

That’s all for now folks so take care, and stay home and stay safe!

Keep safe; keep secure.