China’s new data security initiative has implications for India
Earlier this month, the Chinese government announced the launch of a fresh Data Security Initiative. Outlining its components, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said he hoped that China provides a “blueprint” for the formulation of international rules for digital security.
The Chinese initiative entails eight broad principles, such as a call for supply chain stability, pledges against data theft and surveillance, norms for data storage and access, and a requirement of technology companies never to abuse their market dominance.
Wang’s announcement came per month after the United States launched its new Clean Network program in early August.
The US initiative explicitly seeks to exclude Chinese telecommunications firms, apps, cloud providers, and undersea cables from internet infrastructure employed by the US and partner countries. The initiative draws after a variety of different standards, such as the Prague Proposals and the European Union’s 5G Toolbox.
Beijing is which consists of new proposal to rebel against Washington’s efforts. A commentary in the People’s Daily after Wang’s announcement emphasised that the initiative “upholds equity and justice in data security,” making certain a discussion of data security is about data rather than “politicizing the matter by introducing irrelevant factors such as for example ideology and political systems.” This argument is directed not simply at the Clean Network initiative but also at the Prague Proposals.
As well, China launched a fresh High-level Digital Dialogue with europe. The dialogue revealed that while approaches towards data protection remains a key point of divergence, the EU does think that China will “play a role in defining how global technological developments will go forward.”
In this sense, Brussels appears to be adopting a pragmatic and accommodating approach towards, which diverges from Washington’s current policy.
That is perhaps also an acknowledgement of China’s expanding global technology footprint. Since the launch of the Digital Silk Road, as part of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2015, Chinese tech giants’ global reach is continuing to grow across a range of sectors, such as for example telecommunications, smart cities, telemedicine, internet finance, e-commerce, cloud services, and even satellite services.
This effort has been accompanied by greater R&D focus, boosting indigenous innovation, devising domestic regulation, and a well planned blueprint for reshaping global technology standards by 2035.
In place, through BRI, Chinese businesses command significant market share and Beijing will be using this leverage to try to internationalise its domestic standards. When viewed in this light, it is important for countries, regardless of the Sino-US competition, to take China’s data initiative seriously. If a significant number of BRI countries begin to look at the standards outlined by Beijing, these will impinge on even countries like India or those in the European Union, that are not party to the initiative.
For instance, possibly the most innocuous-sounding among Wang’s eight points is the one about cross-border data retrieval for law enforcement, which the proposal says ought to be addressed through judicial assistance and other channels.
Traditionally, police agencies use a global process called Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) to attain out to platforms for user data. However, the MLAT process has been broken for some time. The procedure itself was never made with the intention to support the quantity of requests that bringing billions of people online would result in. Also, MLAT requests from police agencies have to pass through two judicial standards, one within their home country and one for the united states that the information is being requested from (typically the US since most platforms are American).
The procedure treats each country as equal, which is bad for India because of its high population and crime rate, resulting in a larger level of requests than what the MLAT system are designed for. Perhaps more importantly, the pendency of our judicial system acts as another pain point. Put all this we get typically ten months for law enforcement to get the electronic evidence requested.
There is international recognition of the challenge the type of the MLAT system brings with it. The Budapest Convention on Cybercrime and the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Usage of Data (CLOUD) Act, aimed to address it in a multilateral and bilateral manner respectively.
However, India is not an integral part of either of the initiatives, and there is little reason to believe that this might change soon.
That China aims to create a fresh standard for data flows of such nature could, therefore, be problematic for Indian police. At best, it could result in a situation similar to the status quo, with months required to deal with an individual request from police.
At worst, it could require police agencies to regularly proceed through another set of hurdles to achieve cross-border data retrieval. Therefore, from an Indian perspective, it really is clear that the federal government should act quickly to devise strong data policy frameworks domestically that address many of these issues.
It is merely when these frameworks are set up can India negotiate effectively and condition international discussions.
