[Online seminar co-hosted by Azabudai Kataoka Law and Economics Office and FRONTEO Co., Ltd.]

Against the backdrop of recent geopolitical changes, the trend toward data protectionism is growing in each country, and the concept of "free flow of data" is losing its function as a fundamental principle of international cooperation.
In the past, the United States strongly advocated for the freedom of cross-border data transfer and led the way in realizing a free and open digital economy. In recent years, however, in addition to strengthening sanctions against China for national security reasons,Announcement of strengthening controls over foreign users of U.S. cloud services, and is moving down the path of unilateral data protectionism. Meanwhile, China, which also places importance on national control, is strictly restricting cross-border data transfers in the name of digital sovereignty and institutionalizing localization measures. Amid these trends, there are countries that promote the acquisition of data overseas while restricting the outflow of data within their own countries, which is expanding the asymmetry of data distribution in AI learning and other areas, and is becoming a source of international friction. In the future, it is expected that Japanese companies will be forced to provide trade secrets due to the cross-border application of US discovery and requests for government access from other countries. As a countermeasure, I would like to discuss with all the participants from the perspective of "Should data be stored domestically?"

Hiroshi Kataoka Attorney
Azabudai Kataoka Law and Economics Office)
PhD Candidate in Informatics (Institute of Information Security)