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Asia Pacific Dashboard Digest | Notes from the IAPP Asia Managing Director, 23 June 2017 Related reading: Singapore's PDPC announces latest enforcement actions

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If you ask most people old enough to remember, they will know exactly where they were and what they were doing the day the Berlin Wall came down. That year, 1989, was, according to eminent author and economist Stephen D. King, “peak enthusiasm” for globalization: when we thought more about a collective “us” rather than “us versus them.” Personally, I felt strongly at that point that the world was going to get better. I was young and foolish, and my euphoria did not last.

I attended today a lecture by King with a somewhat alarming title: “Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History.” King posited that globalization waxes and wanes and is not dependent on technology. Christopher Columbus was arguably the catalyst for the start of globalization in the 18th century. Trade barriers were removed through colonization. But this had changed by the end of the Second World War and replaced by the Bretton Woods system of economic cooperation and rebuilding. In theory, we should be coming closer together, not fracturing apart, so why does it seem to be going wrong? 

King puts this down to three things:

• The unprecedented economic success of China
• The West has stopped growing (plus falling education standards compared to Southeast Asia)
• The growth of inequality

So how is history returning (and what does this have to do with Asia and privacy)? Bear with me.

With the western world looking inward with increasing nationalism and protectionism, a vacuum could emerge, King argues, potentially paving the way for China and Russia to reemerge and dominate. With that in mind, I was reminded again about the role of data in democracy and its potential to change world order.

This week, the sensitive personal information of about 200 million U.S. citizens was accidentally exposed by a marketing company engaged by the Republican National Committee. The data, about 1.1 terabytes, includes dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers and the political views of almost 62 percent of the U.S. population. The data had been gleaned from various sources, including social networks. It also included possible religious affiliations, ethnicities and views on contentious issues, such as gun control and family planning. Clearly, companies funded by political parties are creating profiles of voters. Most troubling, though, is the sheer scale of the information collected and the lack of protection.

Earlier this week, it was revealed in testimony to a U.S. Senate inquiry that intelligence agencies believe Russia had “hacked” 21 states, although it was maintained that the U.S. voting system is “fundamentally resilient” and no votes were changed. This time.

So, world order may be changing, and big data may continue to play an increasing role in the outcome, while cybercrime may pose an ever-increasing threat to the way democracy works.

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