Twinning Europe and Asia in Cyberspace (the EU Legislation, ASEAN and its transformative power).

Byline: Prof. Melda Kamil Ariadno and Prof. Anis H Bajrektarevic

While our troposphere is dangerously polluted, one other space - that of intangible world, created by the interconnected technology - follows the same pattern: a cyberspace. Additionally, our cyberspace becomes increasingly brutalised by its rapid monetisation and weaponisation. It mainly occurs through privacy erosion. How to protect effectively individuals and their fundamental human rights, and how to exercise a right for dignity and privacy? The EU now offers a model legislation to its Member States, and by its transformative power (spill-over) to the similar supranational projects elsewhere (particularly ASEAN, but also the AU, OAS, SCO, SAARC, LAS, etc.), and the rest of world. Rules and regulations to protect personal data do not trigger many sympathies. The corporate world sees it as an unnecessary deterrent; as a limit to their growth - more to pay and less or slower to yield, innovate and expand.

Governments would traditionally wish the rules should apply to every societal stakeholder but themselves. And citizenry by large too frequently behave benevolent, nearly careless whether their data is harvested or safeguarded at all. However, such legislation is needed today more than ever before. The latest round of technological advancements was rapid, global and uneven. No wonder that in the aftermath of the so-called IT-revolutions, our world suffers from technological asymmetries: assertive big corporations and omnipresent mighty governments on one side and ordinary citizenry on the other. Even in the most advanced democracies today - such as the EU, personal autonomy is at the huge risk: Everyday simple, almost trivial, choices such as what to read, which road to take, what to wear, eat, watch or listen are governed (or at least filtered) by algorithms that run deep under the surface of software and devices.

Algoritmisation of 'will' is so corrosive and deep that users are mostly unaware of the magnitude to which daily data processing rules over their passions, drives and choices. Clearly, technology of today serves not only a Weberian predictability imperative - to further rationalise society. It makes society less safe and its individuals less free. Societies are yet to wake up to this (inconvenient) truth. In the internet age of mobile, global and instant communications, people tend to focus more on the 'here-usnow' trends: goods, services, and experiences that the IT offers. Individuals are less interested on the ways in which privacy is compromised by software, its originators and devices - all which became an unnoticed but indispensable part of modern life.

Despite a wish of many to grasp and know how data processing and harvesting affects them, population at large yet has no appetite for details. But, the trend is here to stay - a steady erosion of privacy: bigger quantities of data are harvested about larger number of persons on a daily, if not hourly basis. Corporations and the central state authorities want more data and are less shy in how they obtain and use it. Prevention of the personal information misuse (PIM) -intended or not-is the main reason the European Union (EU) introduced the new set of provisions, as of May 2018. Hence, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - as the legislation is known - is an ambitious attempt to further regulate digital technology, especially in respect to the private data protection.

It is of course in conformity with provisions of both the Universal and European Charter of Human Rights, which hold the protection of human dignity and privacy as an indispensable...