Data sovereignty

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Data sovereignty is the idea that data are subject to the laws and governance structures of the nation where they are collected. The concept of data sovereignty is closely linked with data security, cloud computing, network sovereignty, and technological sovereignty. Unlike technological sovereignty, which is vaguely defined and can be used as an umbrella term in policymaking,^[1] data sovereignty is specifically concerned with questions surrounding the data itself.^[2] Data sovereignty as the idea that data is subject to the laws and governance structures within one nation is usually discussed in one of two ways: in relation to Indigenous groups and Indigenous autonomy from post-colonial states, or in relation to transnational data flow. The latter case is dealt with extensively in a new anthology.^[3] With the rise of cloud computing, many countries have passed various laws around the control and storage of data, which all reflect measures of data sovereignty.^[2] More than 100 countries have some sort of data sovereignty laws in place.^[4] With self-sovereign identity (SSI), the individual identity holders can fully create and control their credentials, although a nation can still issue a digital identity in that paradigm.^[5]