The use of information for business ex-ante planning, transaction execution, and ex-post evaluation forms an intrinsic part of almost all corporate operations. The business community has long been forcefully advocating for the international free flow of data for business facilitation, taking cross-border data flows as the "life-blood"€ of transnational corporations. According to a McKinsey Global Institute 2016 report, "approximately 12 percent of the global goods trade is conducted via international e-commerce,"€ and roughly half of global trade services are digitized already. According to the MGI report, the soaring transborder data flows, thus, "generate more economic value that traditional flows of trade goods."€ To be able to critically identify, evaluate, and analyse legal policy issues of data and privacy protection from individual, social, and constitutional perspectives, and eventually apply legal principles to data- and privacy law- related problem-solving, is crucial for legal and commercial success in the future amid the rise of the global trade fragmentation upon the advances of AI technology .

This course aims at providing a discovery-enriched curriculum for students to discover and explore the principles and framework of the law of data and privacy protection along with the evolution of the contemporary trading regime in the digital age. Issues of focus cover the nature of personal privacy, the personal, commercial and constitutional interfaces of personal data protection, digitization's regulatory challenges (e.g. algorithm and automated decision-making in particular), data sovereignty, cybersecurity, and free trade liberation in the digital age. Through discovery-enriched group projects on certain contemporary corporate data and privacy risk management issues, interactive lectures by selected industry leaders or elite professionals, and practise-oriented field trips, students will be put in a discovery-enriched environment to explore the structure and effects of a particular legal and regulatory environment concerning law of data and privacy protection. Building on the new informed insights and understanding of the data governance and privacy protection through participation in this discovery-enriched curriculum, students will acquire data-related yet privacy-minded new competencies and abilities applying/questioning laws and policies in the relevant fields and make their informed decisions.

Applicable to students admitted before Semester A 2022/23 and in Semester A 2024/25 & thereafter

Students must obtain a minimum mark of 40% in both coursework and examination and an overall mark of 40% in order to pass the course. Coursework for this purpose means those ways in which students are assessed other than by the final examination.

Applicable to studentsadmitted from Semester A 2022/23 to Summer Term 2024

Students must obtain a minimum mark of 50% in both coursework and examination and an overall mark of 50% in order to pass the course. Coursework for this purpose means those ways in which students are assessed other than by the final examination.