Author Archives: Daniel Assab

TikTok’s fall from grace and its hurdles to come

Zhang Yiming, the founder of TikTok’s mother company ByteDance, wanted to make a global Chinese tech company, but he knew what needed to be done to accomplish that. He made TikTok unavailable in China and stored data outside the country. This kept Chinese censors away from the app and user data, supposedly, out of Beijing’sContinue reading “TikTok’s fall from grace and its hurdles to come”

China’s gaming regulations tighten: 26,000 apps purged and a new identity check from next month

Chinese authorities have long policed the gaming industry, and this year its loopholes in regulation are quickly closing up. With new identity checks coming into effect next month, Beijing is one noteworthy step closer to regulating the gaming industry as tightly as the internet is in the country. Earlier this month, Apple removed 26,000 gamesContinue reading “China’s gaming regulations tighten: 26,000 apps purged and a new identity check from next month”

From South Korea to Norway, our honeymoon with COVID-19 apps is already over

Since China’s contact tracing system went live in February, around 30 countries have released official contract tracing apps. An evolution of traditional contact tracing systems, what seemed a few months ago to be a daunting yet exciting technological innovation has already reached a turning point. A range of privacy rows have ensued, and according toContinue reading “From South Korea to Norway, our honeymoon with COVID-19 apps is already over”

Where China’s heading with its upcoming data security laws

Earlier this month, China’s national legislature released a draft of its future Data Security Law, which with the upcoming Personal Information Project Law will become China’s latest set of data protection and privacy regulations. The last significant legislation on the subject was the Cybersecurity Law which took effect in 2018 but has proven to beContinue reading “Where China’s heading with its upcoming data security laws”

From national security concern to self-destruction: when techno-nationalism goes wrong

Techno-nationalism has long been a tool to joust for supremacy, but now the old rulebook has been thrown out of the window, and the China-US trade war is on a path to create unmerited polarisation in the world. In 2020, restraint is urgently needed to prevent us from pulling apart our globalised world. Techno-nationalism takesContinue reading “From national security concern to self-destruction: when techno-nationalism goes wrong”

India bans 59 Chinese apps: what developers need to do to avoid the same fate

At the heart of the Chinese app ban lies a problem with the way we build applications. Only by developing systems which hand control of data back to users can we curb the growing concerns around data sovereignty.  On June 15, 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese soldiers were killed in hand-to-handContinue reading “India bans 59 Chinese apps: what developers need to do to avoid the same fate”

Is data ownership just a fantasy? Why it will take much more than a startup to bring about significant change

We don’t need statistics to tell us that most people have a trade-off between convenience and privacy. Despite concerns over data use, Facebook revenues continue to soar, and Google’s search engine market share has consistently held at around 90% over the past decade. But the “privacy paradox,” the inconsistency between privacy concerns and actual behaviour,Continue reading “Is data ownership just a fantasy? Why it will take much more than a startup to bring about significant change”

The European Union must provide a clear regulatory framework for blockchain

Two years on since the implementation of the GDPR, the EU’s data protection law, some significant fines have been handed out to the likes of Google, British Airways, and Marriott. Despite this, the regulation has only begun to scratch the surface of its broader goals of improving data protections for all. Last year was theContinue reading “The European Union must provide a clear regulatory framework for blockchain”

As internet controls in China tighten, privacy and data protection rights slowly make headway

Due to state surveillance and censorship, privacy and data protection rights in China are often assumed to be inexistent. But for private companies, privacy and data protection laws appear to be developing in the direction of European standards. It has taken correcting the worst of abuses to get where they are now, though. Privacy andContinue reading “As internet controls in China tighten, privacy and data protection rights slowly make headway”