Moving beyond geopolitics

Context: The current concept of privacy and cross border flow of information is restrictive. This requires a change in the post-COVID world.

Necessitated Changes:

• Perception of privacy: People across the globe have accepted the idea of sharing live location to the governments without much concern for privacy due to the pandemic. 
• Role of tech-giants: Tech-giants are now playing a greater role at the geopolitical level for instance US-China trade war over 5G and Facebook’s attempt to implement internet.org. 

• Data collected by them can be used for the welfare of societies.

• Ethical Governance: Today incentives are aligned towards the creation of technology and not their governance (e.g. Cambridge Analytica).
• Non-interoperable frameworks: Different frameworks like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation and the US’s CLOUD Act are aimed at restricting data movement hindering the sharing of data for welfare measures.

Way Forward

• Classification of data: into individual data (restricted) and global data set (shared).
• Data Governance: Establish global norms through the UN on data governance to go beyond privacy and geopolitical considerations. These norms will ensure consistency, interoperability, privacy and security.