Love.Law.Robots. May 2020
Hi ,
Rounding up the posts in May 2020
To the little victories
The circuit breaker in Singapore is now winding down, and it's time to "recall" that at some point we have to go back to an office. Or do we? How do we get back to normal from here? I will admit, I have a bit of anxiety over this.
At times like these, I am impressed by the tenacity of my preschooler. She has not complained about being locked up at home or not being able to see her friends and family. It's not as if she doesn't want to go to school (Seen here trying on her face mask in preparation to return to school). I think they understand much better that these are different times, and we all have to adapt as we go on.
The big news is COVID-19
COVID-19 is everywhere you go now, and the legal and privacy impact is just as great as to the economy and our health.
In "The Singapore Government makes an attempt at Data Protection", I took a quick look at the TraceTogether app produced by the Singapore Government, as well as recent developments by the public sector to show that they are doing data protection.
It looks like more people are willing to blame privacy concerns as the stumbling block for TraceTogether, and by extension that we are sacrificing our health for privacy. I do not agree. This looks like a topic for a future post.
Amendments to the Singapore Personal Data Protection Act are imminent
The public sector is important, but the private sector can't take their eyes away now. In "What’s (and what’s not) in the new Amendment Bill of the PDPA", I previewed the draft amendment bill of the PDPA, including breach notification. The Government claims that the bill will be enacted later this year. Prudence demands that action be taken now.
I looked at this post as a roadmap for future posts covering the amendments. Is there anything you would like to see first? Please let me know!
Home Server Fun
Being at home all day... means time to tinker. I decided to reinstall my home server with the new Ubuntu LTS 20.04. With the fresh start, I get to do something fun on a clean slate.
- In "Using Docassemble with Traefik and HTTPS", I get the reverse proxy and my docker-compose file right. My docassemble server works at last!
- Forgive the odd name. In "Let's Play with: Pi-Hole", I try out a privacy focused domain name server -- Pi-Hole. Since writing this post, I found that Pi-Hole blocks between 20-35% of all queries, which it thinks are tracking and advertising links. So a web browser hardly offers complete protection.
Other Posts
In "WestLaw takes a shot at ROSS", I noted a disputes which pits the established company in legal information with a new upstart. Is there a lesson in here for future startups trying to break into this space?
That's it!
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter (it is actually the first one I have written in a long while!). As always, you can reply to this email to let me know if you have any comments. Subscription options are also located in the following section.