Te Kete o Karaitiana Taiuru (Blog)

Free services such as Google, Microsoft Office 365, Facebook, Cloud, web hosting etc, are risking Indigenous Data Sovereignty issues and ownership of their own data and knowledge.

• Wherever your digital information is stored, it is subject to the laws, or legal jurisdiction, of the country in which it resides.
• The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, and the US PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005, permit U.S. government agencies to access any information stored within the U.S. legal jurisdiction without your permission or notification to you. This includes data held by any U.S. organization which may hold your data in a country other than the USA.
• Information shared in Social Media is assigning your Intellectual Property Rights to conglomerates.
• There are no laws to protect Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights.
• Ethnographers have Christianised Māori traditions to the point that we have lost the real meaning. Digital Data makes this more easier and quicker.
• Using proprietary software can remove all of your Intellectual Property Rights to the data.

Things to consider

• If your data is stored with an American owned company such as Microsoft, Apple or Google, then you should be aware of the USA Patriot Act mentioned above.
• Ask your web host where their servers are located. Because it is a local company does not mean that the servers are. Typically the cheaper the hosting, the more the likely hood is that they are hosted in America, India or Asia.
• Don’t add Indigenous images and information to social media. Facebook for example assumes all Intellectual Property Rights and can use any of your information, even if you delete it.
• Try to use Open Source technology
• Nothing is exclusively published on the Internet. Anyone can can copy and re distribute.
• New Zealand National Library take a copy of all New Zealand web sites to archive every three years. This is automated and done without your permission as it is covered in law.
• Images, names and any information that is digitised is turned into binary and split up into various electronic signals and packets of information.
• All digital data is sent via air waves and in the ground and under the ocean.
• Virtual Reality is here and images and videos can be turned into Virtual Reality without your permission and knowledge.