You don’t feel like the way you do things or the way your life works has changed in any meaningful way since you were pulled into politics?

Starting 2015?

Uber regulation, that was your first task.

Of all the laws that come out of the government and go into parliament, how many of those are being debated for 60 days on Join before that?

It really has become the norm by now, and not doing it is the exception.

All through the ministry and the subjects?

This also goes for defense-related laws?

How many people in Taiwan are actually actively participating in the debates on Join?

Have they ever logged in to the answers and questions.

No, press a button.

Like vote the comments up and down, agree, disagree.

That’s still a minority of people doing this?

This means that the people who do not participate in this, for whatever reason, they have to accept the agenda that the other people are coming up with?

Still, if the consensus items are the ones that end up on top of the agenda once people actually get together, that is a pretty powerful way to set the agenda.

I really want to talk about one thing is, in fighting COVID, the government also used sending the messages to people who were at locations where the passengers of the ship or the soldiers have been.

In order to know who to send these messages to, there needs to be a data retention of the phone’s cell tower location data. This, all this being saved. It’s what in Germany you call Vorratsdatenspeicherung .

My impression is most people in Taiwan have not been aware that this data has been saved and is being kept all the time. How long is it being kept? How far back can the telcos go to look…?

In that time, under certain conditions, it can be accessed by government agencies and by law enforcement for whatever reason?

No, I mean cell phone location data.

If there have been break-ins in a specific area, then the government can go and tell the telcos which mobiles have been logged in here on this day, on this day, and on that day? Then they can narrow down potential suspects, for example?

No, I don’t mean contact tracing.

I don’t think most Taiwanese are aware that the data is being kept, anyway. Don’t you think so?

Yeah.

Now, they are. [laughs]

Another thing is that I just read on Twitter somebody said he went to the doctor, and when he gave him his health insurance card, the travel warning back from February still popped up. Like, this guy has been outside of the country on February.

Is that supposed to be this way?

The promise is that we only use this big data aggregations as long as we need it, but now, you don’t really need to know the February travel data anymore, right?

Is that something you would try to get behind and find out what’s going on?

Do you think the German attitude towards data privacy is a bit exaggerating? Are they worrying too much?

In Germany, for example, this location data retention is highly controversial.

If Taiwanese start to take an interest in this…

They also said that the population does not need to trust the government.

They still do.

Transparency.

Do you have one example where they got a critic and put him on the team?

The rice cooker? Yeah.

You did, too.

That was your voiceover?

That was your voice in German?

Oh, really?

Let me quickly jump to another aspect, I also read that you said the aim is for people to know as much as possible about what the government is doing. People are already facing a situation where there is an information overload.

You mean the memes to explain…

Still, OK, just in general, what do you think? How much longer are people able to deal with the kind of information flow they have right now, which will only…?

You mean as long as information is packaged in a palatable way, there is no limit to what people can soak up?

Also, a lot of people, you said yourself that, when using Facebook, it’s like common sense not to spend all your day on social media. A lot of people are…

A lot of people are taking in more information than is good for them.

You just said you removed your Facebook feed?

Still, Taiwanese politicians, like President Tsai, are quite heavily dependent on using Facebook to communicate.

You are posting, but you are not reading?

You are not reading what other people are posting? Only if you specifically go to their page.