Clara Gillispie: I know makes some people nervous, and it’s just not a good…

Audrey Tang: I know. Even when we introduced social distancing, I say, “Keep two meters or wear a mask.” people keep two meters                                                       and                                                   wear a mask.

Clara Gillispie: [laughs] Which, if you can do it, is great.

Audrey Tang: Which is really, really good. Let’s get started.

Clara Gillispie: I know you have quite a busy schedule, too.

Audrey Tang: No, it’s fine. We’ve got an hour to ourselves.

Clara Gillispie: Excellent. I have some questions that are a little bit all over the map, based on my interests and research. Maybe just a little bit of background about me, my original academic focus has been technology policy, but over the last decade at NBR, I’ve moved into looking at energy, public health, and sustainable development policymaking.

Clara Gillispie: This year has been an attempt to bring the two more clearly together.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Clara Gillispie: For Taiwan, that’s involved looking at a couple areas, which, depending on the amount of questions, I might only get to the first one versus three.

Audrey Tang: Sure. Also, I’m told that it would get really loud 50 minutes from now, because there’s a festival thing going on. You’ve probably seen…

Clara Gillispie: I saw. It’s nice.

Audrey Tang: We have 50 minutes of quiet time, hopefully.

Clara Gillispie: The bulk of my questions and interests are first focused around how Taiwan as a democracy deals with misinformation, specifically, about COVID, then some on the ways that it’s responded to COVID more broadly, including the biosurveillance mechanisms.

Clara Gillispie: Then, because that’s not enough area, I have a lot of early questions bouncing around in my mind about smart cities. Maybe…

Audrey Tang: I don’t know much about smart cities. If you ask about smart citizens though, I have lots of stories.

Clara Gillispie: I’d love to hear.

Clara Gillispie: My initial question for thinking about the misinformation challenge is I see so many people who will say, “Oh, misinformation about public health is really easy to address, because it’s all…”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, we just have a cute dog.

Clara Gillispie: Yeah, or I mean, “Oh, it’s just very clear what the answer should be, so no one should fall for misinformation.”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, just cute dog.

Clara Gillispie: I was going to say, I’m normally not a dog person, but following the social media, it’s very cute.

Audrey Tang: I know. The Shiba Inu is not just any dog. It’s a super cute dog. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: I was going to ask, why the Shiba Inu in particular? Is it because it’s so popular in Taiwan?

Audrey Tang: No, literally, the participation officer of the Ministry of Health and Welfare lives with this dog.

Clara Gillispie: I didn’t know that.

Audrey Tang: They live just a block or so away from the Ministry of Health and Welfare. Every time the CECC has a press conference, they just walk back home, take new pictures, and upload to the Internet. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: Oh, my gosh. I’m going to have to tell a couple of my friends that, because they had the same question, if you have that kind of dog, and they thought it was…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s an actual dog, and we thank her for her service.

Clara Gillispie: Yeah.

Clara Gillispie: Thinking about the initial landscape, one of the questions that I always wonder about, when a pandemic is starting, it’s not always clear what is fact versus fiction, because sometimes, the scientific studies might be a little bit lagging.

Clara Gillispie: I’m thinking where the WHO and others, the US, threw a little bit of question mark onto the mask situation, even the…

Audrey Tang: Sorry to interrupt, but this dog was saying, and in no uncertain terms, “Wear a mask to protect your own face against your own hand.” That is never in question.

Clara Gillispie: That’s a good point.

Audrey Tang: We’re not saying anything else.

Clara Gillispie: That’s a very fair point. In situations, though, where it might be unclear…

Audrey Tang: Then we simply don’t have the dog say that. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: How do you think, then, about if you see online people approaching the questions or citizens are tackling it? What do you see as the role, “of government” is not the right word.

Audrey Tang: Of the spokesdog, yes, of the Zǒngchái. The Zǒngchái role is very simple. There is, broadly speaking, two ways that a message go viral, and both start from outrage. It’s discussed at length by Manuel Castells in his books.

Audrey Tang: One is the system that is, I refer to as antisocial media, which goes from rage to fear and then to disgust or apathy, which is extreme disgust. That leads to polarization, and of course, all that. Also, there is another path that turns this outrage, instead of going to revenge or discrimination, which is all based on fear, it can turn it into worrying.

Audrey Tang: Like, we worry together how people could prevent this kind of injustice from happening again. Once we worry together, eventually, we deliver something new. That’s the joy, the joy of co-creation. The movie “Inside Out” captured the five emotions pretty perfectly.

Clara Gillispie: I love that movie.

Audrey Tang: The point of what I call humor over rumor is to make this rage, worrying, joy path, the prosocial path, more viral, have a higher R-value than the outrage, fear, and then disgust path.

Clara Gillispie: This is a very basic question, because my knowledge is limited here. I’ve heard you mentioned before, what exactly is an R value? Is it just the measure of how…

Audrey Tang: On average, how many people do each recipient share to. It’s like a virus. The R value of a virus, if it’s above one, then it will cause an epidemic. If the value is under one, it means each person, before they recover, infect less than one person, then it will not go viral. These kind of disinformation, we don’t have to do anything.

Clara Gillispie: That’s incredibly helpful, thank you. That actually relates to another question I had. I think looking at something Doublethink Lab wrote, they’ve mentioned that in terms of the virality while there’s been a lot of misinformation posts of the, “Can I drink garlic water?” type things, that’s been less viral or less of a concern than…

Audrey Tang: That’s right. Only a few, a handful went truly viral.

Clara Gillispie: Most of those that went truly viral related to political issues or maybe societal questions, like how do we…

Audrey Tang: There’s a truly viral one. “Hong Kong rioter’s compensation exposed, killer police earn 20 million,” with a scary-looking person, and says, “This 13-years-old bought iPhones by killing police.” This is an actual “Reuters” photo, by the way, but it said nothing about iPhones.

Audrey Tang: Of course, this is a doctored message by the weibo account of the central political and law unit, part of the PRC Beijing Regime.

Clara Gillispie: Am I correct in thinking, one of the challenges that I’ve heard is, even if you get out that correction that says, “Oh, this image was doctored.” if it takes too long, people who’ve seen it might say, “Oh, sure this…”

Audrey Tang: This is literally attached to each and every share, say, on Facebook. You can still share it on Facebook, but you can’t escape from Facebook showing a public notice saying, “This is probably…” maybe not probably “…sponsored by the PRC.” [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: That, I thought, has been one of the most encouraging moves this year, to be more transparent on who is this account, or who has been sharing this?

Clara Gillispie: I’ve heard the theory, if it’s not caught, and one of the reasons why it’s so important to think preventatively about how you diagnose and identify, there’s the risk that people might say, “Oh, yes, I saw this a few weeks back, and it didn’t have the label. Now that you’re telling me…”

Audrey Tang: Basically, it has to happen in the same day, because once people sleep on it, it forms long-term memory. There’s no escaping from that. That’s why there’s the triple-two point by Kolas Yotaka when she was our spokesperson, saying that, within two hours of detection of a disinformation with R value above one, we need to roll out two different mode.

Audrey Tang: One picture and one video or whatever, to counter points, each less than 200 characters long, meaning that it fits on the screen. If you get there in two hours, and especially when the detection works on the early stage, when it has not gone this exponential, it was still at this stage…This is just like fighting coronavirus.

Audrey Tang: Then the quarantining would work, and then you can vaccinate with the humor, sufficient number of people, so that on average, when people see the message of outrage, they already laugh about it, so wouldn’t share. This is what we call – what I call – nerd immunity.

Clara Gillispie: It’s a good way of thinking about it. I really like the inoculation message, too, because I think it helps on a couple of friends. The two hours, I’ve always been curious, is that just because it’s quick, it’s very easy to set, or is there a specific reason for two hours versus, say, four?

Audrey Tang: It’s a length of a news cycle. Like morning news, noon news, evening news. If you get within two hours, the next news cycle can do a balanced reporting, but if you miss that, then the noon news may spread the disinformation, and you have to wait until evening news.

Clara Gillispie: At that point, there are more people who’ve heard it, too.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Clara Gillispie: The two modes, is that in a single post, or is it like make sure you release a text post, but also…

Audrey Tang: Yeah, like a meme is an image, but also a press release, for the people who are investigative journalists who want to know more, or a video and a picture, that happen, too.

Clara Gillispie: Most of this, I’ve always been intrigued. I’ve seen a couple of times the wiggling butt. [laughs]

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but he has a front side, too. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: Are these mostly posted on the websites that’s closest to whatever the issue is, so Ministry of Health and Welfare?

Audrey Tang: It’s also just featured on Line today, on the most popular instant message system. Basically, it’s in the commons. Anyone can remix and post it.

Clara Gillispie: I’ve been a big fan of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. It’s both the Twitter account and then the Facebook one. Even beyond the misinformation, I’ve found it very clear in communicating correct information.

Clara Gillispie: I would say, especially as someone whose language skills are limited, it’s very visually representative of, “This is the case numbers, and here’s how you can link to more text. Maybe you can translate it.”

Audrey Tang: The Ministry of Health and Welfare, especially around the Food and Drug Administration, they have the most exposure to disinformation, even though pretty nonpolitical most of the times. Still, if you look at the trending misinformation for the pandemic, it’s still about health.

Audrey Tang: “If you eat this and that, it will cause cancer. If you eat this and that, it will kill cancer.” [laughs] They have the most experience countering this.

Clara Gillispie: One thing that I’ve heard, and I welcome your reaction on, is that, especially compared to the United States, there’s much less anti-vaccine or vaccine disinformation.

Audrey Tang: Oh, yeah, the flu vaccine, I think, is historical high in adoption rate, so that they would have to throttle it a little bit. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: I’ve noticed the very clear, “Here is the cycle of when you can go.”

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Clara Gillispie: Line today, I’ve seen some of the messaging on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. Is there anything I’m missing relating to WhatsApp?

Audrey Tang: PPT.

Clara Gillispie: PPT, yeah. Is there anything that’s being, either like a bot or accounts on WhatsApp?

Audrey Tang: There are Line at-bots. I think a few ministries and politicians have Telegram accounts, as well. Especially, Line started charging too much. Some of them switched to Telegram first. I don’t know about WhatsApp. WhatsApp is not the most popular messaging app here.

Clara Gillispie: I know. I was very big on WhatsApp, because earlier in the year, I was in India. Then the United States is popular, too. When I got here, everyone immediately said, “You need to be on Line. This is where…”

Audrey Tang: That’s right. When people say they are online, sometimes they just mean they are on Line.

Clara Gillispie: On Line…

Clara Gillispie: I’d love to hear more about the process of moving from identification to dissemination. Something I was less clear on was how many people are we talking about who are involved in this process, or hours per week, and are we talking about people…

Audrey Tang: It differs from ministry to ministry. It’s very hard to cite. The Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Council of Agriculture, maybe the Ministry of Interior, these people-facing ministries, and Ministry of Economic Affairs, of course, with their “Toy Story” based campaigns.

Audrey Tang: I will say the Ministry of Education, and also, for some reason, the coastal guards, they have some of the best response systems. It’s really hard to gauge, because it also depends on whether they face a controversial issue.

Audrey Tang: When there’s a controversial issue, they will work with more professional comedians. Sometimes, like YouTubers also volunteer their time. There’s a very successful campaign with the Ministry of Education about school bullying.

Audrey Tang: Most of the people who contributed, I think pro bono or something, because they care about that particular issue. It’s variable.

Clara Gillispie: Taiwan FactCheck Center, involved in that as well?

Audrey Tang: No, not really. What we call this humor over rumor, it may be a rapid response to something, but we don’t call ourselves fact-checkers, because that’s journalists’ job, the journalists, they of course already fact-check within their own institution.

Audrey Tang: Some of the professional journalists also formed the fact-checker to fact-check the fact-checkers, like very meta. That’s actually part of the International Fact-Checking Network. At that point, I think there’s the TFCC, there’s MyGoPen.

Audrey Tang: These two are part of the IFCN. There’s all grassroots ones, like Cofacts, which then evolved into more what we call forks, derivatives, such as the Dr. Message Bot – again, a cute dog – from Trend Micro, our antivirus company.

Audrey Tang: There’s also the Meiyuyi, or the Aunt Meiyu, which is now part of the WhosCall, which is another startup focusing on fraud detection on phone calls and things like that. There’s an ecosystem, but this ecosystem, unless they get the IFCN certificates, they don’t quite call themselves journalistic fact-checkers.

Clara Gillispie: That makes some sense. Also, some of the ecosystem helps to amplify or reinforce or check work, but also, it sounds like, for some of the efforts combatting, not recreating the work or taking away from.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, exactly. The Line ecosystem is pretty good, because it’s shows a real dashboard of which partnering organization which offer which fact-checking, and also the trending ones. Many people can just look at this analysis as well the Cofacts one, because this is all just public information, to detect to those disinformation with an R value above one, but before they actually reach a lot of people.

Clara Gillispie: I know, I was looking at some of the Cofacts database, and I was incredibly impressed by just how much data was out there, of not even, just broad data. Not even trying to do a message, but allow researchers to check.

Clara Gillispie: I’d love to hear a little bit more about ways in which you’re trying to reach difficult-to-reach communities. There are two that I have in mind in particular. One is, of course, the elderly or those who are less digital native are often cited as the most likely to spread…

Clara Gillispie: Then the other one is foreign communities, whose first language might not include Taiwanese Mandarin or another Chinese dialect. It might be English or Southeast Asian languages.

Audrey Tang: According to the TWIGF report on the broadband utilization and Internet use and so on – of course, it’s all online, I’m not going to cite the entire report – I think it’s rather a stereotype that elderly people use less. It’s not like that.

Audrey Tang: A lot of elderly people spend a lot of time on Line, and they’re very happy with QR code. I think this is really not a generational issue. What really is an issue, however, is linguistic and cultural. If we only use, as you mentioned, Taiwanese Mandarin to spread those messages, there are the elderly people who are more fluent in Taiwanese Daiyi or Hakka or indigenous languages and so on.

Audrey Tang: We do need to work the cross-cultural translation, not just linguistic, but also cultural translations as well, working with lifelong learning endeavors, such as community colleges. They’re very helpful there, and also long-term healthcare facilities.

Audrey Tang: The elderly people also want to help their family chat groups to fact-check their children and grandchildren. They also want to contribute. It’s just they have to know how. The mLearn portal, for example, emphasize that although it’s Ministry of Education, this is lifelong education.

Audrey Tang: We do work with, as I mentioned, those reaching out ways. Working with people who don’t speak any of the 20 national languages has been challenging.

Audrey Tang: The MOHW did really well there, working with English and most of new immigrant languages, but it’s true. You need to make the picture cards in a very deliberative fashion, actually consulting those different culture groups.

Audrey Tang: Also, just paying attention, for example, making sure that the text doesn’t overlap the picture, so that when you want to translate this into Vietnamese or something, it doesn’t hurt the dog’s cuteness.

Clara Gillispie: [laughs] Or change the meaning, part of it is lost.

Audrey Tang: Or change the meaning, exactly right. I would suggest you talking to maybe MOHW, because they’re, I think, the most advanced working on this cross-cultural thing. For example, the Coastal Guard, I don’t think they work on this that much.

Clara Gillispie: It may be in some ways less relevant to their work day-to-day.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, we say the Coastal Guard as 住海邊, meaning that everything is their business.

Audrey Tang: They have a very broad reach.

Clara Gillispie: You’ve spoken to this a little bit already, but I’d love to hear more about how you of measuring success in some of these efforts. The challenge that seems to come up inevitably is how do you define success of a disinformation campaign that never…

Audrey Tang: Oh, very easily. This says, “Wear a mask and wash your hands.” so we can use this SCADA system of the Taiwan Water Company to measure whether people wash their hands more. Not individual people, but in aggregate, do the fountains and faucets turn on for a longer time, and whether that’s just in the municipality or rural areas, too.

Audrey Tang: We can also work with the community pharmacists to know how many fraction of people do have access to masks in the rationing system. Not vis-à-vis disinformation, but on the success of the call-to-action.

Clara Gillispie: That’s really helpful, because the action seems to be also where you want to drive, even regardless, if you have a campaign that doesn’t respond to the public health concern…

Audrey Tang: It really needs to stand alone. This is not just counter-disinformation, there is also sharing scientific fact.

Clara Gillispie: I think I know the answer to this one, but I want to ask directly to make sure I…

Audrey Tang: Sure.

Clara Gillispie: I know the World Health Organization over the summer and fall has been doing some efforts to try to think about their own metrics for success in combatting the infodemic. Has there been any invitation, extension, inclusion of Taiwanese participation?

Audrey Tang: We do have limited scientific contact so that, through the WHO system, we can reach other scientists and get their contact. Some of the scientists even cited Taiwan as performing really well. There’s scientists who cite these conversations.

Audrey Tang: Of course, we have MOFA people here, so I’m obliged to say having scientific access is not the same as having ministerial access, unless you are in a country where the top epidemiologist expert is also vice president, like in Taiwan.

Audrey Tang: Talking to the top scientists doesn’t necessarily translate to ministerial action, but the point is ministerial action. Having the ministerial access is still very important. End of obligatory information. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: Especially, too, in some of the breaking news and understanding where it’s not just historical review, but it urgently needs action now, and getting that high-level attention to it.

Audrey Tang: That’s right.

Clara Gillispie: Digital literacy as a broad effort, I know there’s been this conversation, and I’ve read a little bit online, about trying to embed it in high school curricula.

Audrey Tang: We call it competence, we don’t call it literacy.

Clara Gillispie: If I can ask, what’s the difference between…

Audrey Tang: Literacy is when other people produce media, and you consume it. Competence is when you produce the media. Competence builds on literacy, of course. If you’re illiterate, probably you’re not very competent.

Audrey Tang: Being literate is not enough, because with broadband as human right, many primary schoolers maybe have more Instagram followers than I do, in which case, they are media. They need to learn about the journalistic part of media, like checking the sources, balancing the…

Audrey Tang: …ethics and things like that. Without which, they’re going to fill in their media content, anyway, and probably from conspiracy theories.

Clara Gillispie: I know some of that’s been ongoing. Has that officially been launched in high schools?

Audrey Tang: Yeah, of course. That’s what I refer to by the mLearn portal. It’s mlearn.moe.gov.tw. It’s been there for quite a while now.

Clara Gillispie: OK, fantastic, thank you. Then this has been incredibly helpful, too. Thank you. This transitions between a few of my questions, the transparency focus.

Clara Gillispie: The case study that I’ve been previously more familiar with on thinking about government response to pandemic or crisis is South Korea, where during MERS, the administration was not transparent enough by a number of measures led to changes in laws.

Clara Gillispie: The challenge being that, with COVID-19, some human rights groups argued that they’d actually gone too far in saying…

Audrey Tang: To the other direction. We believe in making the state transparent to the people, but if you make people transparent to the state… [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: There can be some groups that question, “Oh, we want to know where the cases are clustered,” but then you get to the question…

Audrey Tang: We don’t do that, not to a level where you can reidentify the person.

Clara Gillispie: Following the Ministry of Health and Welfare, it’s very broad on the case, so you can understand maybe the country of origin and a little bit about what the next steps were taken to ensure management of local spread.

Audrey Tang: That’s it.

Clara Gillispie: Has there been any discussion more or less information requested, or?

Audrey Tang: Yeah. There was a case, I think, in April when a hostess in a professional hostess bar was diagnosed with COVID. Of course, in host and hostess bars in nightlife district, they were already stigmatized to begin with.

Audrey Tang: When we learned that the first day, she said, “Well, I’m just staying at home. I don’t have many friends. I don’t hang out with people. I don’t know why they heard it.” Then the next day, she says, “Yeah, well, I want to protect the anonymity of my patrons.” which is very legit, but there’s a large backlash.

Audrey Tang: Not only people want to 肉搜, so how do I translate it? D-O-X-X, doxx her but not successfully, though. They also are basically putting pressure on the CECC to fine the business to put the owner to jail, or to do other criminal code stuff.

Audrey Tang: Like the US Prohibition, exactly the US Prohibition. You know what I’m talking about. They have the moral high ground, because after all, the hostess did lie to the contact tracers to the first day. The CECC refused and resisted that pressure. I was in the meeting, because we were originally going to talk about masks.

Audrey Tang: Then we didn’t talk about masks that day. Minister Chen Shih-chung eventually said, “What we are going to do is a 行政指導…” — an administrative recommendation — “…that the nightlife district, specifically the dancing clubs and host bars and hostess bars, need to remain closed until they can figure out how to make the real contact system work.”

Audrey Tang: That’s it. He didn’t put anyone in jail. Didn’t actually fine anyone, even.

Clara Gillispie: Very neutral to the person as well.

Audrey Tang: Very neutral to the person. Then it’s almost like a challenge to the social innovators. After three weeks or so, some business invented such a way that the patrons who visit can leave a prepaid SIM card or a throwaway email address that doesn’t identify themselves.

Audrey Tang: They can use a pseudonym, and then they enter the host or hostess bar. Then, if there is a local transmission, then within 14 days, they will be notified by that handle, but the data is never sent to the CECC, or indeed, to any government. It is in the business.

Audrey Tang: Then after four weeks, it’s shredded – like, literally shredded – at which time the patron can throw away that SIM card or throwaway email address. It does the job of real contact without any new data collection in the government side. This is what some academic people called participatory self-surveillance.

Clara Gillispie: I’ve been wondering about that, because I’ve gone to a couple of museums and different places where they’ll say, “Oh, we need your phone number or email.”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, but we will shred that four weeks afterward.

Clara Gillispie: It’s only if they’re specifically approached by the CECC saying, “We have a person that we’ve interviewed who says they’ve come to your facility within this period of time. You might want to notify everyone.”

Audrey Tang: Exactly.

Clara Gillispie: Fantastic. It’s hard, because Taiwan has just done so overwhelmingly well.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it’s half a year since the last local transmission.

Clara Gillispie: I was going to ask how you think about measuring success on that, when you’re like, “Well, it’s harder to miss cases.”

Audrey Tang: I know, I don’t know.

Audrey Tang: Maybe you measure against Taiwan.

Clara Gillispie: I know. Every time I try to do a study or comparison and talk to anywhere else in the region or the US, my family still can’t believe. They’re like, “Wait, you went somewhere, and you didn’t wear a mask necessarily?” I was like, “Well, after December 1, I’m wearing my mask.”

Audrey Tang: Yeah, I think measuring against Taiwan, I think we are second only to Antarctica, maybe… [laughs]

Audrey Tang: …and the International Space Station.

Clara Gillispie: I’d love to hear a little bit more about how wire surveillance has worked in general. I’ve been very interested, having gone through the quarantine process myself.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, get SMS every eight hours.

Clara Gillispie: Yeah. I got a couple times where it told me that I had left. I got very anxious, and I had to text back. I was like, “No, I’m still here.”

Audrey Tang: As soon as you text back, that’s fine.

Clara Gillispie: That’s what I was told, too, like, “Make sure you leave your phone on, because sometimes, it can get drained.”

Audrey Tang: That’s right. If it runs out of battery, then they report as if you’ve left.

Clara Gillispie: Others have been clear to characterize the report-in system online as not being an app, but being a service. I’d be curious to hear about how that…

Audrey Tang: It’s a telecom-side software. The software has always been there already. It’s been used to do geographically-targeted earthquake warnings. Maybe a few days ago, you got one, saying that, “There’s imminent earthquake.” also, flood and evacuation warnings as well.

Audrey Tang: The capacity is already there. It’s not a new data collection point, not, unlike the tokens that the Singaporeans wear. This is not a new device, and you don’t have to turn on GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, or whatever, because it only measure the signal strength and nothing else, which is why it’s a little bit imprecise.

Audrey Tang: Which may be a good thing, because then we don’t know which room you are in. We just know which block you are in. Then we know that the telecoms do the processing themselves. They cannot outsource this to other people.

Audrey Tang: It’s not like you get random advertisements because of your quarantine. Then also, unfortunately, they’re also subject to the shred it after four weeks data retention rule. I think it’s proportional, but that’s because we’ve been exposed to SARS, and I remember SARS.

Audrey Tang: I understand standards may be different in other jurisdictions.

Clara Gillispie: I got to use a lot in quarantine the daily report-in your symptoms app. I’d love to hear more about the decision process of deciding what goes into that or not, because in some ways, you could think of it having mission creep.

Clara Gillispie: It’s also a good opportunity, thinking about foreigners as being difficult to reach, of directly saying…It occurred to me when I was using the app, I tried to message back and someone, like, “Can I cure COVID with garlic?”

Clara Gillispie: The app said, “No.” Well, “You need to call this, because we can’t understand.” I’ll be curious to hear more about how you think about…

Audrey Tang: It’s not a real call center thing. No, it’s not a call center. The mission is very clear, the symptom, the temperature, your suggestion to improve the experience. These are chosen precisely because that’s what authorized by the act for communicable diseases.

Audrey Tang: Because we’ve never declared a state of emergency, so we are bound by whatever is in the act. Anything else we want to do, we need preapproval from the parliament, the legislature. This is why I mentioned the heuristic of not setting up new data collection points that wasn’t there before the pandemic. That would require parliamentary authorization.

Clara Gillispie: Are there any methods or mechanisms or processes set in place to review and audit these systems? I’m thinking like the question I’ve had a couple times in the US context is how do you know that your information is being deleted after the 14 days, or how do you…

Audrey Tang: 28 days, and how do you audit the nightlife district, that they’ve not sold it to advertisers?

Clara Gillispie: Exactly.

Audrey Tang: In Taiwan, there is no single answer to this question, because we don’t have a single data protection authority. According to our current privacy act, the nightlife district, for example, will probably rely on the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Audrey Tang: On the other hand, if this is like a job search board or something, the Ministry of Labor would be the data protection authority. All in all, I think there’s 14 different data protection authorities. The problem here, of course, as rightly pointed by the drafters of GDPR, is that the standards will necessarily differ.

Audrey Tang: Even if, for example, the Ministry of Health and Welfare can give a full account of how your data has been, the retention, deletion, and so on, but if they have worked with, for example, the convenience store, which doesn’t report to MOHA for DPA purposes – it reports to MOEA – you have to ask MOEA, too.

Audrey Tang: If your, for example, immigration report is part of the MOI, then you have to ask the MOI, and actually also MOFA, maybe, because that’s where it is issued. The decentralized architecture of the data protection authority indeed makes the law — which is very clearly written — like you can get a copy of your reports and requesting for update and deletion when the purpose is gone, and things like that.

Audrey Tang: It’s fine, but it’s extremely time-consuming, and you can’t really, like just looking at this table, saying that these trades are the MOEA, these are the Ministry of Finance, Council of Finance, this is the NCC, Ministry of Transportation, Education, Interior, Labor, MOHW, Finance, or GEC, the Gender Equality Committee, or FTC, the Fair Trade Commission. They are in charge for 多層次傳銷, how do you say that? Multi-level marketers. If you are subject to a privacy breach of a multi-level marketing enterprise, then you have to report to the FTC.

Audrey Tang: Look, this is news even to me. Not many people can really memorize this table. That makes the DPA act difficult to enforce, and of course, many people don’t bother to ask all those different ministries. They ask one or two and get maybe satisfied, or they can live with it, and then that’s that.

Clara Gillispie: Sometimes, there might be a response, but there’s a lot going on. It’ll take time.

Audrey Tang: You have to write a formal letter to the CECC. They don’t do phone call, because they don’t know you it’s you. If you are not you, then you’re essentially requesting other people’s data.

Clara Gillispie: Exactly. Can I ask, where does this table live?

Audrey Tang: If you look at PIPA.ndc.gov.tw, which I think is in the GDPR office of the National Development Council, because they are in charge of negotiating with the EU on the GDPR adequacy. The lack of a single DPA is, I think, the only blocking issue now.

Audrey Tang: They have this comparison of GDPR and Taiwan’s current status. Now, NDC being, of course, the initiator of the Bilingual Nation Initiative, with luck, they probably have an English page, which will probably help you.

Clara Gillispie: [laughs] Google Translate has been amazing, but sometimes not so.

Audrey Tang: Yeah, it has been amazing. I’ve found DeepL to be more amazing, but OK.

Clara Gillispie: My favorite error has been Facebook Translate sometimes translates MOFA as the Ministry of Magic, and that’s just adorable.

Audrey Tang: They are. They are a magical ministry. Yeah, there is the English version. The Personal Data Protection Office, the PDPO of the National Development Council. They are the prototype of the single DPA.

Audrey Tang: Everything is there, but the enforcement is currently limited. I think the PDPO, the office, and yours truly both would really prefer if we have true GDPR adequacy, and you have a single place, preferably, to just press a key and download everything related to your data being used.

Audrey Tang: There’s a National Development Council website called MyData for that, but I don’t think there’s an English version just yet, at mydata.nat.gov.tw.

Clara Gillispie: Would any of that, either in terms of the enforcement question or the single-agency DPA, be changed or enacted by the idea of this new digital ministry?

Audrey Tang: Yes.

Clara Gillispie: Would that include a specific single agency under the digital ministry or…?

Audrey Tang: The dependent agencies are not under ministries, but, of course, because of the digital ministerial council, there will be an opportunity to talk about setting up new offices to satisfy the GDPR. It will be related, but the minister of the digital ministry will not have the appointing of the personal data protection office. Otherwise, it’s not independent.

Clara Gillispie: From looking at India over the last year, it’s been quite the challenge. [laughs] I think you’ve hit upon all of my questions. This has been so incredible. The thing I always ask everyone at the end is, based on the questions you’ve heard me ask or topics I’ve touched on, are there any bad assumptions that you think I have or things that I haven’t touched on that you’d encourage me to think about?

Audrey Tang: The first part, no. I think these are excellently-framed and very balanced questions. Also, I think it’s worth highlighting the, what I call, people-public-private partnership, because much too often, foreign correspondents report the Taiwan all-of-society approach as public-private-people partnership or public-private partnership, but that’s wrong.

Audrey Tang: The people set the norm, and like the mask availability map, that’s set by the social sector, not my idea. They essentially pressure government, like reverse procurement. We become the vendors. [laughs] Then we…

Clara Gillispie: And solve a genuine problem.

Audrey Tang: Right, exactly. Then we take that to pressure the private sector or convenience stores. It’s people-public-private partnership. That’s the only thing I would like to bring up.

Clara Gillispie: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much. This has been really great.

Audrey Tang: Thank you, awesome.

Clara Gillispie: The noise did not get too bad, either.

Audrey Tang: It’s quietly getting louder now. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: Will you get to enjoy the holidays at all, or is it continuing to be a very busy, I know already, 2020 for everyone?

Audrey Tang: I think I’m going to enjoy the holidays, definitely.

Clara Gillispie: That’s good. This is really my first time in Taiwan, so I’m trying to decide both what I might do for Christmas, and I’ll…

Audrey Tang: Excellent.

Clara Gillispie: Thank you.

Audrey Tang: The magician here, the MOFA colleague, can maybe make some suggestions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is truly a magical place. [laughs]

Clara Gillispie: I got to use going to g0v Conference as my excuse to go see Tainan…

Audrey Tang: Tainan has better weather, and better food.

Clara Gillispie: It was so nice. I love Taipei, but it’s good to travel a little bit.

Audrey Tang: Very much so. OK, cheers.

Clara Gillispie: Thank you so much, cheers.

Audrey Tang: Bye.