Guest posted on the TUANZ blog.
TUANZ CEO Paul Brislen has written a thought-provoking article on the prospects of turning New Zealand into a data haven. There’s a lot going for the idea, but as Paul notes, there are a couple of stumbling blocks, one of which is the legal situation:
The final problem then, is the legal situation. We would need to become the neutral ground, the data Switzerland if we’re to gain their trust. Publicly adhered to rules regarding data collection and retention. Privacy built in, access only under the strictest conditions.
It would indeed require some law changes to become a “data Switzerland” where, as Paul envisages, “we treat bits as bits and that’s that”, and don’t allow the Armed Offenders Squad to swoop in with helicopters if someone uploads the latest series of Mad Men.
Exactly what those laws would be is a huge kettle of fish: privacy rights, intellectual property rights, safe-harbour provisions, search-and-seizure, criminal and civil procedure, etc. But putting aside the content of those laws (and their desirability), it is worth noting that New Zealand is in a somewhat disadvantageous situation in one respect vis-a-vis most other countries. Whilst New Zealand ranks as one of the most politically stable, corruption-free, and rule-of-law-abiding countries – ideal attributes for a data haven – we are in the very rare category of countries that are both:
- Unicameral, unlike Australia, the UK, the US, Canada, most of the EU, Japan, India, and others; and
- More importantly, have no written constitution that entrenches rights, limits Government power, and can strike down non-compliant laws. Only a handful of countries (notably including the UK) are in this category (and this is putting aside Treaty of Waitangi complications).
By my quick reckoning, the only other country with both of the above attributes is Israel.
What this means for us, as Sir Geoffrey Palmer wrote many years ago, is that whoever is the current Government of the day has unbridled power. Theoretically, there are little if any limits on what can be passed into law – all it takes is a 1-vote majority in the House of Representatives. This includes major constitutional change and retrospective law. For example, in the past decade-and-a-bit we have seen a Government change New Zealand’s highest Court from the Privy Council to a new domestic Supreme Court on a narrow majority, and retrospectively amend the law (also on a slim majority) to keep a Minister in Parliament – both things that may may well have faced constitutional challenge in other countries, but here were able to be effected with the same legislative ease as amending the Dog Control Act.
What’s this got to do with becoming a data haven? Well, it means that we cannot give the highest level of assurance that a future Government won’t do certain things that might undermine our data haven credentials.
For example, being a true data haven would presumably mean strong freedom of speech laws. You would want a reasonable assurance that a data centre would not be forced to hand over or delete data due to hate speech laws (present or future), except perhaps in the very strongest cases. New Zealand does have its peculiar Bill of Rights Act covering matters such as free speech, but this does not limit parliamentary power – in fact, Parliament regularly tramples various provisions of the Bill of Rights Act, with the only requirement for doing so being that the Attorney-General must inform the house. Nor does it prevail over inconsistent Acts: if another Act removes or abrogates a right, then the Bill of Rights Act doesn’t change that. So Parliament could potentially pass a law, on the slimmest of margins, that limits freedom of speech. This is not as far-fetched as one might think in an “open and free” democracy: the process is well advanced in the UK, where people face arrest and criminal prosecution for making statements considered by the authorities to be “insulting” (such as calling a police horse “gay”). Could this extend to limiting free speech (or content) hosted in data centres? There is nothing that says it can’t, or won’t.
Compare this with the US, where most of the internet’s infrastructure, governance and data centres are located. The federal Consitution provides the highest protection possible against Government limitation of free speech. Now this obviously does not (and is not intended to) stop situations like a US federal agency shutting down Megaupload and seizing data, in that case partly on the basis of alleged intellectual property infringement. But at least the limits on what the US Government can do are constitutionally defined and proscribed.
This issue is obviously much broader than data centres, but it does highlight the question: is it acceptable, in the information age, for there to be no effective limits on Government power over our information?
