‘Loss of privacy is global warming of digital age’ – Taiwan activist at RightsCon

According to the Freedom House Freedom on the Net report, ‘Taiwan hosts one of the freest online environments in Asia’ and enjoys a ‘vibrant and competitive democratic system’.

But the beautiful island country faces its own challenges, and of course, it lives under the spectre of an aggressive authoritarian regime that interferes in its politics both overtly and covertly and may one day attempt to take its freedom.

To better understand the dynamics in the civil society community working on digital rights and tech policy matters in Taiwan, I spoke to three experts:

• Liu I-Chen, Asia Program Officer at ARTICLE 19
• Kuan-Ju Chou, Deputy Secretary-General of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), and
• Grace Huang, Director for Global Justice and Digital Freedom at Judicial Reform Foundation

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the discussion:

Liu I-Chen:

My name is I-Chen. I am Asia Program Officer for ARTICLE 19. ARTICLE 19 is a international nonprofit organisation that works on promoting freedom of speech and also information integrity. And I’m based in Taipei.

Grace Huang:

My name is Grace. I am working at [the] Judicial Reform Foundation, JRF, which is a pro bono lawyers’ civil society organisation in Taiwan. I’m currently the Director for Global Justice and Digital Freedom, and it’s great to be here.

Kuan-Ju Chou:

I’m Kuan-Ju Chou and I work for [the] Taiwan Association for Human Rights, and you can call us TAHR. TAHR is a member-based nonprofit organisation in Taiwan, and we do many different human rights issues, like refugee rights, rights for assembly, and rights for housing. About digital rights … that we focus on privacy, freedom of information and expression. I’m working as the Deputy Secretary-General.

Justin Hendrix:

I’m so pleased to have all of you here … I’ve had the opportunity to travel [to Taiwan] twice before and very much looking forward to both being on the island, but also in the community of folks who are concerned with human rights and with internet freedoms.

Looking forward to this conversation, which I hope will set the stage a little bit for those attending RightsCon as to what’s happening in Taiwan at the moment.

I thought I might start by asking each of you, just explain to me what is top of mind for you? Your broader community of colleagues is travelling in from around the world. They’re bringing their own concerns, of course, and going to be talking about a range of issues that cross the planet. But what is on your mind about what’s happening in Taiwan right now that you want people to leave understanding?

Kuan-Ju, perhaps I’ll start with you on that.

Kuan-Ju Chou:

This year … there is a deadline in August for Taiwanese government to fulfill several legislations relating to privacy, and the first one is that the Taiwanese government should complete the legislation on the data protection authority  because currently there is no independent data protection authority in Taiwan. There is only a preparatory office now. And why there is a deadline, it is because there is a judgment from the Constitutional Court back in 2022.

This is because there is a case, filed by the TAHR and other NGOs that related to women’s rights, and also NGOs that … are supervising the National Health Insurance system in Taiwan. This case is about the informed consent, and also opt-out rights from patients.

So currently, we also hope that in August this year, I think there might be three legislations that focus on the general data protections, and specifically on secondary use of health data and also social welfare data to respect patients’ rights.

Because this is not only for patients and health data. That we knew several years ago that this kind of data can be linked with other data. These drafts are currently not in the Parliament. So they are just inside the ministry or inside an administrative bureau in Taiwan.

We hope that the version come about from the administrative bureau or ministry is rights-based [and] have [enough] rights-based protection.

We also hope that … Parliament in Taiwan will support people’s consent and privacy rights, and also support a data protection commission or other data protection authority to have enough tools to supervise the private and also public sectors

We think that it is very important to supervise the policy and have the public sector use data, but also how they are setting policies for secondary use or other use of data that is on a very, very massive scale.

Justin Hendrix:

I guess I’ll come to you next, I-Chen. You’ve been working on a variety of different things. I know you’re concerned about cyber security and the balance of cyber security versus human rights, particularly when it comes to resisting Chinese influence on Taiwan.

What is top of mind for you headed into RightsCon?

Liu I-Chen:

I think this will be a good opportunity for an international audience to visit Taiwan at this time, and particularly, I think they will have the chance to witness firsthand of how Taiwan is under the attacks, at least kind of digital threats, and how the society as a whole respond to these threats.

So to provide a clearer picture, Taiwan suffers various forms of digital threats, including the gray zone tactics from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that include cyber operations or information manipulations.

Taiwan has actually been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year by the V-Dem Institute. And in terms of cyber attacks, we have 2.4 million on a daily basis according to the statistics from the National Security Bureau. So we do have a lot of attacks.

At the same time, I think government and civil society collectively showed a lot of resilience against these kind of threats, and I think it’ll be a very good example of how one society walks a fine line between resilience against external threat and also try to ensure its commitments to the human rights.

Justin Hendrix:

And Grace, how about you? Headed into RightsCon, what are you working on?

Grace Huang:

So my concern would be … of course with the big context of China and the general Western democracy, and the dynamics between China and the so-called Western democracy countries.

So Taiwan, politically-wise, has been framed as a little bit of an idealised version. It’s quite sad. Of course, we would love to say we are a real law democracy, and … of course, colleagues here are all working on that. But that’s definitely a work in progress and it’s a large struggle.

Actually, [it’s] pretty [interesting], especially when the government tries to polish the image as being almost like a role model of democracy, especially in Asia, which in a certain sense misrepresents the reality of Taiwan society, of the power relationship between the government and the people, and … capitalism, domestically and internationally.

In short, the struggle in Taiwan is real. And there are a lot of common issues worldwide that we share, of course, with the Chinese so-called influence more like a case study, an intense case study.

But it will be a pity and a mis-framing to think of Taiwan only in the context of China and in the context of disinformation in this context of, we are almost like a role model of democracy regional-wise, worldwide, because that would actually stifle true progress domestically – and it is happening.

So I understand for RightsCon to be hosted in Taiwan. We still feel happy and privileged. But as a CSO worker, we would like to shout out and tell the world, ‘This is not a perfect place, we share a lot of same issues, and even if we don’t … fundamentally, there could be a lot of common issues that we could work together on’

In that sense, the organisation that I work in now, we strategise to reserve at least 80% of our effort for long-term structural change. Around 20% of our effort and energy, we respond to current emerging situations.

However, we consciously reserve lots of effort, energy or resource in digging into the structural problems, and try to deconstruct and construct together in a way that the means and the ends actually aligns …

So there is a Bill of Rights in US history, and we borrowed that idea and call it a Digital Bill of Rights, which inferred to this critical historical pivoting point where the old framework of law, the old framework of political, economic rules, has to have a sort of a quantum leap where new ideas, new frameworks must begin to [be] establish[ed].

And through what means? It must be through co-working from the very bottom. Okay? So this is a bottom-up movement.

This is purely run on [volunteer] lawyers, [volunteer] tech experts, [volunteer] activists, or just anyone. We have students in college, we have old professors, we have gender non-conforming people, we have … physically-challenged people all together, to really sit down and dig inside about, first of all, what is the value that we fight for?

‘Democracy value’ could be a vague word, but what precisely is this fight, is this revolution or movement for?

When we begin to reform the consensus of this 2025, this moment, this historical moment right as of now, what is the real value that we actually fight for? And with that common value, we build on writing legal languages that specifically use the language of rights. We try not to fall into the mistake of protectivism, or even parentalism, where the state is still the initiative.

This also means that if the initiative point is the state, it’s easily that first, they could neglect that initiative. And secondly, there’s no real checkpoint to the state themselves. So we try not to use protectivism, even in the issues where protectivism is commonly used .. for instance, children’s rights.

So we use children’s rights, the children’s situation of this new digital age, and also for physically challenged or even gender minorities, racial minorities. There’s just too much protectionism even for now in approaching the so-called digital situation.

This is just an example of [us] consciously trying to do maybe two fundamental things.

First, this is a bottom-up process where we start with common values. We build from the very bottom. This is, we’re trying to establish pillars for future social constructions, and especially through the language of law.

Secondly, we consciously try to depart from protectivism, especially from the state and instead, we use the language of rights, the people’s rights, and … therefore, the state’s responsibility, which is not only to protect but also first respect people’s rights, of course.

Also, not only passively but also actively, strategise for the people, by the people and of the people.

Justin Hendrix:

So I’ve heard three interesting things. And Grace, I appreciate that because you’ve put us in a kind of global context. You’ve addressed maybe a misconception that some folks who are reading Freedom House reports or V-Dem reports, we all have a picture of Taiwan, of course, as being at the top of the chart when it comes to both democracy generally and also when it comes to Internet freedom and digital rights, things of that nature.

But sounds like, from Kuan-Ju’s comments, from your comments, of course things are more complicated, and there is still a battle underway there in many ways that may look like some of the battles that are taking place elsewhere around the world.

I-Chen, I do want to come back to threats from China, but I want to dig in just for a moment with all three of you, I hope, on the nature of the civil society sector there.

One of the things, and again, Grace, you’ll correct me if I’m wrong, but the story on Taiwan from outside is that you have a unique relationship between various civil society organisations, between academia, and between the government – that there are more channels for communication, that you’ve got better platforms for conducting democracy, and that there is more of a healthy civic environment for addressing some of these questions than perhaps we have in, as you say, other Western democracies.

Certainly, I’m speaking to you from the United States. There are a lot of people here wondering if we’re a democracy anymore. Perhaps the grass is greener from where I sit at the moment, but let me ask each of you that … Are there things about your current circumstances that you admire, that you think people could learn from, without tipping over into perhaps giving off a false impression that nothing is wrong?

Grace Huang:

I would like to follow up when you mentioned about the score of our Freedom House index, whether it’s index for democracy, index for online freedom, and not only Freedom House. Globally, there are a lot of indexing, ranking work. And I happen to have worked on those before, just quite recently.

What I could share, and I believe there is a blind spot when people begin to read those, is that all of these index are in relativity. Okay? It’s relatively fine, relatively okay. Yes, Taiwan is definitely relatively okay than a lot of other societies, and we appreciate that.

But my experience in working on these global indexing is that, let’s make it an abstract example. Let’s say the actual freedom on the Internet situation decreased by three points of score. However, let’s say in China, a lot of those indexing, they already got zero point maybe 10 years ago.

Of course, this year is worse than 10 years ago, but it still keeps the zero point. You understand that? So the bottom line has decreased. The seashore has receded 10 kilometres, 20 kilometres, and therefore, when Taiwan or other so-called more democratised societ[ies], we also recede. But relatively, we recede relatively little than others.

With those kind of methodology, when the zero point is still the bottom line, we get propped up. So the truth is, Taiwan is not improving. The situation in Taiwan is worse. And in the same logic, I would say that the whole world, every country is not improving. We are losing our battlegrounds

It’s only because other more challenged places get even worse, the situation on [the face of it] … looks fine. No, it’s not. It’s just relativity. And I guess this is also a good message for people who’s going to come to Taiwan to understand the real situation.

What we could learn from Taiwan’s experience is to, in a perspective-wise, look at who is actually working to improve. It is not the state, it is not the government that is trying to work on improving our freedom situation. It is the civil society. And the reason why the Taiwan civil society prospers, again relatively, it’s that we’ve been through authoritarianism quite recently.

The current authoritarianism ended around, let’s say, 30, 20 years ago. It depends on how you define authoritarianism, right? But it is a short history, and therefore, the civil society cherishes what we have now.

We still got that, first, we still crave for freedom. Secondly, we still have the skill to push forward because we just did the drill, we just did the fight quite recently. Those who fought for the last big war is still around here. Therefore, the young people could still learn from the senior activists, and all of us crave for freedom.

In some way, thankfully, to China, to Xi Jinping, that presents a immediate threat because we know that any second, China might take over Taiwan. Any second we might lose freedom.

So, [because] we have that very conscious, immediate urge and the need to act, it is a civil society that’s doing the work, and quite often, it is the government who’s taking the credit and actually pushing against civil society.

Justin Hendrix:

I-Chen?

Liu I-Chen:

Just echoing one of Grace’s point, I think it is quite remarkable for Taiwan as a young democracy to thrive as a democracy in Asia, and how it maintained a relatively high degree of freedom in this region while trying to counter very real foreign threats from China at the same time.

A lot of the countries, when facing external threat, would tend to a degree of securitisations or they will limit their freedom in certain ways. But I think Taiwan, in terms of countering foreign threats, has been successful – a lot due to the efforts from the civil society.

For example, when we are trying to counter foreign information manipulation and interference, a lot of the efforts actually build upon the success of the civil society and not from the government side. Government has done its share, but a lot of the trust, and the alliances and the collaborations are actually done by the civil society.

We also have a pretty vibrant civic tech community that serves as the cornerstone of digital governance and in the battles of combating disinformation. We have open-source civic tech communities, and they are open to collaborate – hackers, coders and activists – and to provide those digital solutions to society.

I do think that is a lesson that can be shared with our international audience.

At the same time, Taiwan can actually do more to share this experience of combating these kind of threats … I think we are not trying to frame Taiwan as the only best practice in the world. It has its own issues.

Kuan-Ju Chou:

I agree that the civil society in Taiwan is very vibrant, and there are many, many improvements that came from civil society and not originally from the governments or the parliament. And also, in last year, we can see that there are some big protests … like the Bluebird [Movement] …

We know that in many very huge demonstrations there will be some civil society to hold the biggest stage and hold the organisations, but I think, I personally am very happy to know that people will not put this – how to say? – put this glory to certain NGOs or certain personal heroes.

I think this is a civil society’s improvement … But on the other hand, I have other expectations from parliament and governments.

Personally, I think these two bodies should came from more healthy relationships with different communities and civil societies … because in Taiwan, most of the time we use freedom of information to know how the government do or how some private sectors, how they are using datas.

I think there are more improvements from government and parliament sides that they can put more trust in civil society to let citizens more actively join the supervision to how government or private sector are using our data.

Liu I-Chen:

Just to follow up on what Kuan-Ju just said. I think while Taiwan’s model has been praised as more grassroots-based, more decentralised, I think it also has a different side of the stories.

For example, in our upcoming report about how China influences the cybersecurity norms in the Indo-Pacific region, we interviewed the digital experts, the experts of cybersecurity in Taiwan, and we observed that there is also another narrative, which is that these experts are very frustrated because, while  civil society are very vibrant and taking very active roles to solving problems and provide additional solutions to the society … they think the government actually lacks more co-ordinated efforts to deal with these issues.

Some are very frustrated. They would rather call the government than [be] active [themselves in] countering these threats.

Well, government may defend itself as it is. It does not want to intervene for dealing with expression. It does not want to take too active roles. Otherwise, it will be content moderation. But still, I think there is a agreement that there are small things that government can do to co-ordinate the efforts to counter the digital threat in Taiwan’s digital landscapes while maintaining human rights-based approach.

Justin Hendrix:

How would you characterise the difference in Taiwan’s approach to cybersecurity, in particular, vis-a-vis China, versus other countries in the Indo-China area?

What is it that Taiwan does differently?

Liu I-Chen:

I think Taiwan’s digital governance or the cybersecurity governance model, a lot of it is based on civic participatio, and I think that comes from the success of the civil society first.

So we have hackathons, or the initiative like [decentralised civic tech community] g0v, which showed a lot of success in using the power of [society] to provide solutions to societal problems.

A lot of success has [also] been observed [in terms of] the government, by the executive power [that] they are willing to adopt similar models into the government agency as well. For example, we would also have hackathons hosted by the presidential office, and the government would like to use this kind of model even in smaller branches of the government, to utilise the wisdoms and the success of a civil society to collaboratively provide a solution to the issues that they are dealing with.

On the other hand, I think right now PRC’s digital governance is very heavily focused on state control, party control, and also with almost infinite extension of securitisation, so everything will be framed on national security issues.

At the same time, while Taiwan does face very serious national security threats from its neighbors, it shows a different path of civic participation, and also the government maintains a high level of self-conservation to not intervene in society when dealing with these kinds of national threats, unlike China.

Justin Hendrix:

Kuan-Ju, I want to put a question to you based somewhat on what you were telling us at the outset about some of the challenges you’ve got there in dealing with the intersection … it sounds like one of the things you’re saying is that Taiwan’s facing some of the same problems that everyone in the world is facing with the general acquisition of people’s information – how both to get the value out of that for the public interest, but also to protect people’s privacy interests.

Kuan-Ju Chou:

It’s both a simple and very complicated question, because I think in Taiwan, most of the time, people will ask the question: is this kind of data leaked? But what we are saying is that, currently, we don’t have evidence that health insurance data [for example] is leaked or not … But people care about security. And in Taiwan … when TAHR are asking about a data protection system, or data protection mechanism, the government most of the time will say,’Oh, the cyber security or the information security are perfect to protect this …’.

But security and privacy are different concepts. So we are talking about different issues. [Yet] in Taiwan most of the time the government or some people will put these two concepts together. So if there is no data breach, if there are no leaks, many people will think [there’s no] problem.

Another problem is that when we are talking about the misuse or manipulation of personal data, people might think that there is no real harm … if this is not identity theft, or not a security breach. So it is sometimes very hard to talk about this issue [and] why TAHR put much effort on privacy rights, I think, [is] because back in the authoritarian times in Taiwan, there was massive surveillance in physical form, and not digital form.

At that time, when we see many documents from that time, surveillance do not have to be true. Those information do not have to be real about these persons. When a government or when some private sectors have the tools or have the method to collect and organise this data, or this system that they can manipulate, they can use these tools or [the] web to comment [on] a person’s life or family.

That’s what we see that the misuse or manipulation of personal data is a threat to democracy. That’s why we put effort in this. In this time that when we are talking privacy to people in Taiwan, we are not talking about confidentiality. We are talking about how people can control their own data, and to know how the government, how the researchers and private sectors, use this kind of data.

Currently in Taiwan, there is a very strange concept from both telecommunication companies and some government offices – that they think that if they put personal data into identified data, they don’t have to give out the legal basis of how they can justify [using] personal data, because they are thinking that, if data is de-identified and there is no ‘personal data’, they do not have to obey the Personal Data Protection Act.

But it is very tricky, because the first [question] is how the controller can process this data [as there is] no legal basis for them, [and the second concerns the fact that] … there are some details in Taiwan’s Act that identification data in Taiwan is only pseudonymised data, so this data can be linked with another source of personal data.

This is just an incident that we saw in the last year that there is a politician, now a legislator, who claimed he got data from telecommunications [which he] can use to analyse two different protests, what kind of people are [participating], many months later.

In TAHR, what we care about is not if the politicians say it is true or not. That is not we care the most. We care the most that the commercial use of telecommunication data [is something about which not] all consumers are aware, and what the legal basis [is] that can make this data … link with other sources of data?

Justin Hendrix:

I feel like one of the things I’m hearing here is, for folks who are coming to RightsCon … and maybe have one view of Taiwan that’s based on things they’ve read in international reports, etcetera, often the message is, ‘Look at this vibrant democracy, look at this model democracy’.

I think one of the things I’ve heard tonight is, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from Taiwan which are drawn more from, or perhaps better understood through, the lens of its recent struggles with authoritarianism, than by simply applauding it for its recent history with democracy.

Grace Huang:

In the most general sense, my work in the struggle for digital freedom … and the struggle of digital freedom contemporarily, is the story of the boiling frog, and I think that speaks to what Kuan-JU and I-Chen just said. How, like, yeah, the government has really target me, yet … right?

This is all the ‘yet’ that kind of gave the leeway to the government to actually do anything, or actually not do anything, that’s harmful.

So if we think about the boiling frog metaphor – it all goes gradually. And it’s also a story of global warming. So if we say data is the new oil, then definitely the loss of privacy is the global warming of the digital age. So we’re facing two global warmings now. Both are boiling frog stories

Therefore, for me, I would really love to shout out to anyone who’s coming to RightsCon [that they … ] basically have an interest in fighting for freedom.

The contemporary freedom struggle definitely includes digital freedom as a prerequisite to any other freedom. The loss of privacy is taking out the foundations of other forms of rights. Therefore, to anyone [reading this], I would love to introduce you, and welcome you to work together on building an actual legislative movement in establishing people’s rights.

The JRF’s Digital Bill of Rights is just one example. It is not perfect, which is why we specifically frame it as a work-in-progress. It’s not going to end anytime. We keep on revisiting the value, re-evaluating the current power landscape, the power landscape of politics, the state, and also the capitalism landscape, which of course, is Big Tech.

Especially [important is] the ecological dependency part where the Too-Big-To-Fail 2.0 is not only too big to fail – it’s too big to be regulated.

[In Taiwan, when] some form of regulation [was suggested], quickly all the lobbying side, legal side, all the army, just come and nip the bud. So we have to make sure that current people, future people, keep on making new buds so they can catch up on us, right? So we work together.

This is again for the people, by the people, of the people. This is a movement for everyone, and I personally look forward to meet everyone, all of you in RightsCon.

I understand the current situation doesn’t allow people to fly now because of the new American political landscape. But anyway, if you can find JRF, you will find a lot of truly dedicated human beings that care for freedom.

Liu I-Chen:

I think the opportunity of RightsCon is really valuable and I just want to highlight, I think, two more recommendations …

I think RightsCon is a good opportunity as a reminder to the international community that, standing with Taiwan and advocating for Taiwan’s participation in the global and digital governance discussion, is very important because it will only strengthen the international coalition against authoritarianism.

Also, Taiwan’s society, and private sector actors, which are very advanced in their own skills, can contribute more into the discussions of how digital rights is moving forward, and participate in international forums, especially those related to  technical standards-setting which [is] the new battleground for authoritarian actors.

I think the second thing for RightsCon participants and the people who are joining us in Taiwan, is [to understand that] Taiwan can serve as a platform for human rights advocates to actually collaborate, because I think our adversaries and [threats] in the digital space [are] actually better co-ordinated [than us].

Our adversaries really take the word ‘solidarity’ for real.

On the other hand, I think civil societies in the Pacific region, for example, or in Asia in general, can do much more to ensure that we actually act and respond in a co-ordinated manner. For example, Taiwan has a lot of knowledge in China research, in civic tech communities, and [that] knowledges and effort can be disseminated in a more co-ordinated way, or we can somehow strategise to have a collective response [against] the emerging threats that we are facing.

Justin Hendrix:

I think each of you has given us a call to solidarity … thank you so much for joining me.

Grace Huang:

Thank you so much.

Liu I-Chen:

Thank you so much. Very looking forward to seeing you at RightsCon.

• This article was first published here