Streaming video platform Netflix launched in late July “The Great Hack”, a documentary on the dire state of privacy in the United States and Europe, where people spend much of their time online and volunteer countless nuggets of exploitable information.
The two-hour movie’s conclusion is terrifying: Big business and politics have been mass-mining users’ everyday data, ranging from Facebook “likes” to online subscriptions, for profit and power. It ends by calling personal data “the world’s most valuable asset [...] surpassing oil.” Fast-forward three weeks and it appears that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, or at least his speech-writers, have watched the documentary, as the President asserts the importance of personal data protection in his State of the Nation address before members of all branches of ...