Asian Privacy Scholars Contemplate Life after Snowden

Abstract

Edward Snowden had already made his brief and unscheduled visit to Hong Kong some weeks before Asian Privacy Scholars met for the third conference of their Network, but he was on everyone’s mind as they considered the APSN conference theme of ‘Privacy Protection in Ubiquitous Network Societies in Asia’. The two day conference followed another entitled ‘Up in the Cloud: Legal and Privacy Challenges in Cloud Computing.’ Both conferences were organised by the Law and Technology Centre at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong.

This paper provides a summary of some of the highlights of the conferences, including the papers in a special session with a focus on data privacy in all the jurisdictions of 'Greater China' (the PRC, HK SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan). Papers were also presented by speakers from Japan, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Switzerland, the USA, and the UK.

Keywords: Asia, privacy, data protection, Snowden