‘Due to the diminishing importance of traditional geographical boundaries in the era of high technology, geography-based rules are no longer easily enforceable’. Photo credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Ever since the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, the sheer scale and pace of technology development has fundamentally and disruptively changed our societies and daily lives. While it cannot be denied that it has made life easier, it has also thrown up complex challenges that call for a re-think of some fundamental assumptions in politics and governance.
Challenging the notion of nation-state
First, as defined by political theorists, a nation-state is a territorially limited sovereign state. However, this fundamental notion of the nation-state as a geographical entity in which citizens live is undergoing massive change due to technology. While it is still necessary to safeguard geographical boundaries against physical invasion/invasion, there are now many external phenomena happening at the borders of nation-states, namely cyber-attacks, which cross physical borders to challenge their socio-economic Make a ripple effect and political existence. The advent of Web3, large-scale peer-to-peer networks and blockchain has allowed both states and non-states to influence areas such as trade, commerce, health and education, while remaining outside the financial and judicial realm.
Second, because of the diminishing importance of traditional geographic boundaries in the age of high technology, geography-based rules are no longer easily enforced. Now, no form of “virtual activity” is confined within the confines of a country’s borders; Data travels over the course of the World Wide Web and spreads around the world at a speed unimaginable until now. More importantly, when such activities violate the laws of a particular geographically determined nation-state, in the absence of globally accepted norms, it is difficult to enforce the law in that particular geography and deter recalcitrant actors. It is very difficult to book under the law. Laws of the nation-state. It is difficult to collect irrefutable evidence without collaboration from other geographic regions. Therefore, when the national sovereignty of countries is challenged by activities beyond their physical boundaries, their existing constitutionally established institutions comprising the executive, legislature and judiciary will prove inadequate to deal with them. Furthermore, it is also difficult to establish the applicability of any country-specific laws due to the universal nature of the technology, which leads to problems with enforceability.
Third, the emergence of new technologies has exposed the inability and inefficiency of the nation-state government to administer and regulate these technologies. No longer is the nation-state the only medium through which multinational corporations, NGOs and supranational organizations, both legitimate and illegitimate, state and non-state actors need to operate. These entities have transcended physical boundaries to cooperate with the rest of the world, independent of traditional administrative and regulatory institutions. For example, topographic maps, previously produced by public and military institutions, are now available entirely by private non-state actors, such as Apple or Google Maps.
Operational Complications and Technology
On the economic side, “with a valuation of over $4,100 billion, the five largest US tech companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) symbolically exceed the GDP of Germany (the world’s fourth largest economy) in terms of valuations.” ) is crossed”. One of the most important levers of these companies is data and their use.
This means that data “has become the most important raw material of our time, and only a small number of companies now hold unique economic power and influence over it. These are meta-platforms: their sheer size allows them to access the amount of information they constantly enhance the data they analyze and refine the algorithms they use to influence, if not control, us and our activities”. Thus, as in the past at various international forums Reiterated by India, “the borderless nature of technology, and, more importantly, the anonymity of the actors involved, challenges the traditionally accepted concepts of sovereignty, jurisdiction/regulation and privacy”. A principles-based global order for technology adoption and dissemination would help streamline enforceability challenges and provide guidance to emerging economies on how to deal with their evolving definitions of sovereignty. Furthermore, as we saw in the case of Is covid-19 pandemicThe way forward in managing future global pandemics is probably through the adoption of digital health. But what would this digital health framework mean if we cannot have a data-sharing ecosystem based on privacy, free flow of data and a global regulatory system trusted by all countries/nation-states, especially developing countries? Therefore, India needs a data transfer and data privacy law. But these laws, in isolation, will only be able to do so much unless facilitated by a global principles-based regulatory framework trusted by all countries.
I supported this approach in Parliament (on the need for a global order for rules for the deep web, crypto, or cross-border data flows). Even the Finance Minister while addressing a meeting with the International Monetary Fund at the G-20 event on Guidelines on Virtual Private Digital Assets called for a globally coordinated approach to the regulation of digital assets such as crypto-currencies. stressed the need. Given the potential risks to the world’s financial ecosystem.
With India, as the current chair of the G-20, it is the perfect opportunity to lead in this, as it has previously done in green initiatives such as the International Solar Alliance or the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure.
Amar Patnaik is a Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha; A former CAG bureaucrat and a lawyer. Views expressed are personal