Greetings from Singapore!

While our colleagues on the East Coast, U.S., have been enduring heavy snowfalls and below-freezing temperatures, Singapore is enjoying the “cool season” (the dry phase of the winter monsoon), with temperatures below 30 degrees Celsius. It seems, though, that the political climate is steadily heating up.

News of a DPRK missile test led to U.S. security briefings taking place in the presence of the Japanese Prime Minister, by smartphone light, on a golf resort terrace in Florida. This raised eyebrows, not least because of the attendant security issues. Contemporaneously, the DPRK leader’s half brother was allegedly assassinated in Kuala Lumpur. In Hong Kong, with the election of the chief executive approaching, data privacy issues were raised over an unofficial election opinion poll, in what has been dubbed “a rare political intervention” by the Hong Kong DPA.

Slightly less controversially, Australia’s legislature approved a law requiring mandatory breach notification. The scheme applies only to government agencies and organizations governed by the Privacy Act, meaning it does not apply to state government organizations and local councils, nor organizations with a turnover less than 3 million Australian dollars a year — a section of the law that was resisted by one political party wanting wider protection for all.

In Japan, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Google in its first "right to be forgotten" case by rejecting a man’s attempt to have references to his arrest and conviction for child prostitution removed from Google search results. Although the court did not mention the EU-style "right to be forgotten," it set strict conditions for allowing the deletion of certain references, elevated the "speech status" of search results, and declined to establish such a blanket right. The court stated that, given the serious nature of the crime, it continued to be a matter of public interest and that the public’s right to know outweighed the man’s right to privacy.

It’s been an interesting week and I was recently reminded of the Confucius adage: “May you live in interesting times.” This was intended to be a blessing, not a curse. Sometimes, one hankers for the days of a Facebook feed full of kitten and puppy videos!