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In late June, as US President Donald Trump soaked up media attention by stepping into North Korean territory with the nation’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, an important speech made by Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, at the G20 in Osaka went comparatively unnoticed.
Prime Minister Abe declared the launch of the “Osaka Track”, an overarching framework promoting cross-border data flow with enhanced protections.
The initiative aims to standardise World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules for electronic commerce and the global movement of data flows with better protections for privacy, intellectual property and cybersecurity.
The EU, the United States, China and 21 other nations formally signed the declaration, which commits the signatories to promote efforts on international rule-making in this area. India did not participate, and Indonesia and South Africa abstained.
Prime Minister Abe had previously discussed the proposal at the World Economic Forum in January 2019 – read here.
Abe called his model ‘Data Free Flow with Trust’ (DFFT) and contended that enabling data flows could help fill the gap between the rich and the less privileged. He stressed that trust in international data flows can only be assured with strong cyber-security measures proper protections and proper protections for personal data.
“Unleashing such potential for maximum utility requires international rules that are in sync with the rapid progress of digitalization,” Abe said.
This initiative is part of a broader shift Abe envisions for Japan, which he has termed “Society 5.0.” This was first mooted back in 2016.
This initial agreement, while momentous, is just a first step in major countries working together on how cross-border information flows should be handled. Reaching a final consensus on these rules is unlikely to be easy. Attitudes towards privacy and data protection rules vary substantially across the globe. While blocs such as the European Union place a high emphasis on data protection under the GDPR, other countries have no comprehensive data protection laws or have imposed data localisation restrictions on the movement of data.
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