1. Introduction
In 2021, approximately 600,000 residents in Taipei’s Wanhua district received government SMS alerts marking them as COVID-19 “high-risk” based solely on location data (Chen, Jiang and Zhang, Reference Chen, Jiang and Zhang2021). Residents discovered invisible annotations on their National Health Insurance (NHI) cards, which prompted healthcare providers to refuse treatment (Hong, Reference Hong2021). In 2023, Kaohsiung deployed comprehensive surveillance to manage concert crowds, including tracking population movements that enabled real-time infrastructure adjustments to disperse 90,000 attendees within one hour while channelling post-event consumption through economic incentives (Xu, Reference Xu2023). Both COVID-19 surveillance in Wanhua and concert economy management in Kaohsiung involve extensive data collection to create spatial effects beyond individual privacy issues. Yet they diverge. Wanhua’s surveillance generated documented contestation, while Kaohsiung’s surveillance foreclosed opposition through consumer satisfaction.
Traditional frameworks on data governance prove insufficient. Individual privacy rights approaches emphasise informed consent and data protection (Solove, Reference Solove2013, p. 1880; Barocas and Nissenbaum, Reference Barocas and Nissenbaum2014, pp. 31–3; Acquisti, Brandimarte and Loewenstein, Reference Acquisti, Brandimarte and Loewenstein2015, pp. 513–4), but overlook harms when algorithms flag entire neighbourhoods or channel consumers’ behaviours (Citron and Solove, Reference Citron and Solove2021, pp. 839, 847). Critical data studies identify corporate “surveillance capitalism” (Zuboff, Reference Zuboff2020, pp. 96–100), yet offer limited insights into governmental digital infrastructure serving ostensible public interests. While traditional surveillance theory focused on state-centric and panoptic models of spatial control and discipline, the field has evolved to recognise that modern surveillance operates as the “private-public nexus” (Foucault, Reference Foucault2025, pp. 370–419; Lyon, Reference Lyon2014, p. 2; Helgesson, Reference Helgesson2011, pp. 471–2; Taylor, Reference Taylor2022, pp. 91–105; Kilic, Reference Kilic2025, pp. 4–8). However, a critical gap remains in understanding how this public–private nexus is legitimised and expanded, particularly outside of traditional security and defence. These approaches inadequately address how data governance may create collective spatial effects such as community stigmatisation, differential service access, and algorithmic exclusion based on geographic categorisation (Mittelstadt, Reference Mittelstadt2017, p. 479; Taylor, Flordi and van der Sloot, Reference Taylor, Floridi and van der Sloot2017, pp. 15–7; Miller, Reference Miller2025, pp. 20–1). Understanding the spatial dimensions of data governance requires alternative frameworks to capture how concentrated data control reshapes urban and legal environments while enabling or foreclosing community responses.
The puzzle here is why similar technological capabilities produce such divergent social responses. Both cases mentioned above deploy comprehensive population monitoring through legal frameworks ostensibly serving public interests such as public health and urban management. Yet Wanhua’s surveillance triggered legal challenges, civil society documentation, and community mobilisation, while Kaohsiung’s system operates without documented opposition despite processing data from millions of residents. This divergence cannot be explained by surveillance scale, technological sophistication, or legal authorisation alone.
The research question guiding this article is: how does concentrated data control create new forms of spatial power in Taiwan’s data and urban governance, and under what conditions does “data hegemony” enable or foreclose community responses? This article introduces “data hegemony” as an analytical framework to examine how concentrated data control enables disproportionate influence over digital and spatial arrangements through three interconnected mechanisms: (1) comprehensive data accumulation providing unprecedented knowledge of populations and behaviours; (2) infrastructure control facilitating data collection, processing, and access; and (3) interpretative authority over legal frameworks justifying surveillance applications. These mechanisms create systematic spatial power, which determines service access, business traffic allocation, and geographic resource distribution.
Data hegemony manifests spatially through “digital enclaves”—zones where algorithmic categorisation produces spatial effects without physical barriers. We use the term “boundary” here to refer not to physical demarcation but to systematic patterns of differential access: who receives which services, whose businesses thrive, and which communities face stigmatisation. These boundaries are “functional” in that they determine resource distribution and service access. They function like borders even though they operate through data architectures rather than walls or checkpoints. Digital enclaves create what we call “infrastructural borders,” invisible lines drawn through information flows that structure spatial arrangements. The question is not whether individuals face physical barriers, but whether data architectures systematically channel access and exclude participation based on algorithmic categorisation.
Through comparative case analysis, this article reveals that data hegemony operates through two distinctive models. Coercive data hegemony (Wanhua) deploys visible surveillance under emergency powers. It causes harms such as healthcare denial, spatial stigmatisation, and economic losses, which enable contestation through legal challenges, community networks, and court rulings. Service-integrated data hegemony (Kaohsiung) embeds surveillance within infrastructure improvements. Those improvements deliver genuine benefits, including efficient crowd management, optimised facilities, and economic stimulus while operating through opaque mechanisms. The latter model creates satisfied individual subjects unaware of collective vulnerabilities embedded in comprehensive monitoring systems. The contrast reveals that the effects of data hegemony depend not on surveillance intensity but on visibility and whether communities experience systematic harm that catalyses responses.
This article proceeds as follows: Section 2 traces Taiwan’s evolution from colonial-authoritarian “information state” to contemporary “informational city,” showing how historical surveillance infrastructure persists through democratic transformation. Sections 3 and 4 present detailed case studies: Wanhua’s COVID-19 surveillance and Kaohsiung’s concert economy management. Section 5 synthesises insights by examining contrasting mechanisms and implications. Section 6 concludes with theoretical and practical implications for democratic oversight in digitised cities.
2. Taiwan’s data governance lawscape
Taiwan’s contemporary data governance represents technological evolution rather than a radical departure. To understand how democratic frameworks enable data hegemony, it is necessary to examine how colonial and authoritarian surveillance infrastructure persists through institutional adaptation in Taiwan. We employ the lens that Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos termed “lawscape” to reveal how law and space co-constitute normative reality through digital technologies (Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Reference Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos2020, pp. 1–4).
Castells theorised how the information revolution transforms urban space by privileging the “space of flows”—systems exchanging information, capital, and power—over the traditional “space of places” (Castells, Reference Castells1989, pp. 444–5). Taiwan presents a distinctive trajectory: an existing authoritarian “information state” converting into an informational city rather than developing digital infrastructure organically from capitalist development. Where Castells observed informational cities emerging from industrial capitalism’s restructuring, Taiwan demonstrates how colonial and authoritarian surveillance infrastructures adapt to exploit telecommunications infrastructure. The surveillance logic persists across political regimes by transforming its mechanisms, including from visible police inspections to invisible algorithmic processing; from periodic household surveys to real-time data flows; from physical enforcement to infrastructure that citizens use voluntarily for other purposes.
2.1 Historical foundations: surveillance infrastructure persistence
As Bayly demonstrated for colonial India, cutting-edge information technology has long served population control in colonial modernity (Bayly, Reference Bayly1997, pp. 3–7). Taiwan exemplifies a similar pattern from Japanese household registration to contemporary digital surveillance. During the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945), the administration integrated the traditional Baojia (保甲) systemFootnote 1 with the Japanese police surveillance to establish comprehensive household registration in Taiwan (Lin et al., Reference Lin, Chen, Chuang, Yang, Wilkerson, Hsieh, Yap and Huang2020, p. 220; Kuo and Chen, Reference Kuo and Chen2016, pp. 227–8). Residents reported all personal information changes, such as births, deaths, marriages, and address changes. The police verified the accuracy of data through regular home inspections and household surveys. This created continuous information flows from residents through community officers to colonial administrators, transforming registration into an everyday governance practice.
Following the Republic of China (ROC) government takeover of Taiwan, martial law (1948–1991) further embedded household registration within police apparatus to strengthen the Taiwanese population control (Kuo and Chen, Reference Kuo and Chen2016, pp. 232–6). This institutionalised comprehensive data collection is an instrument of state power. Data functioned as a surveillance mechanism, not merely as administrative information.
The role of law has transformed critically. Under authoritarianism, legal frameworks existed primarily to authorise and legitimise state surveillance rather than constrain it. Taiwan’s democratic transition created genuine legal constraints through constitutional challenges and civil society mobilisations. Yet these same democratic legal frameworks enable sophisticated data hegemony when emergency powers concentrate interpretative authority or surveillance operates on service provision. This historical trajectory reveals three critical transformations: (1) from visible to invisible surveillance mechanisms; (2) from direct physical enforcement to algorithmic spatial effects; and (3) from law as authoritarian instrument to law as contested democratic terrain, which enabled both control and resistance.
2.2 Contemporary legal architecture and persistent institutional control
Taiwan enacted the Computer Processed Data Protection Act (電腦處理個人資料保護法) in 1995, and amended it in 2000 to become the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) (個人資料保護法). The PDPA aims to prevent infringements of fundamental personal rights while promoting reasonable data utilisation by regulating the collection, processing, and use of personal data. The PDPA now establishes the Preparatory Office for an independent Personal Data Protection Committee (個人資料保護委員會) with increased penalties for violations (PDPA Articles 1-1, 18, and 56). The Freedom of Government Information Law of 2005 (FOGIL) (政府資訊公開法) established government information disclosure obligations to ensure public access and fair use of government information. Yet, nine exemption categories grant agencies discretion over the scope of disclosure (FOGIL Article 18, Paragraph 1).
This dual framework creates asymmetrical information flows. Agencies maximise data collection through PDPA provisions (Articles 15–16), which authorise extensive collection for statutory purposes, while invoking FOGIL exemptions (Article 18) to restrict public access to decision-making processes. This dual framework gives agencies discretionary control over both data collection and disclosure, which enables strategic opacity when politically expedient. Institutional actors control both data accumulation and information disclosure—the first and third mechanisms of data hegemony operating through legal frameworks.
Two landmark judgements exposed the extent of data control while demonstrating democratic constraints. Interpretation No. 603 of the Judicial Yuan (司法院釋字第603號解釋) (Constitutional Court R.O.C. (Taiwan), 2005) established that privacy rights protect citizens’ autonomous control over personal data disclosure, including scope, timing, manner, and recipients, and ensure rights to knowledge, control, and correction of personal data use.Footnote 2
Constitutional Court Judgment No. 111-Hsien-Pan-13 (憲法法庭111年憲判字第13號判決) (Constitutional Court R.O.C. (Taiwan), 2022) proved more revealing. It challenged the NHI database—a comprehensive repository of health data from over 23 million citizens collected since 1995. The government had been providing this vast dataset to researchers and institutions for secondary analysis without meaningful consent or oversight. The Court found the system partly unconstitutional, noting that the scope of data collection, secondary-use permissions, and the absence of individual control created an environment in which citizens effectively lost autonomy over sensitive personal information. This exemplifies how legal frameworks ostensibly serving public benefit (secondary use of scientific and research) enable data hegemony when institutional actors interpret statutory authority expansively without adequate constraints (Chang, Reference Chang2024, p. 189). Yet the NHI database operated for decades before constitutional intervention.
Between 2013 and 2015, the Ministry of Education’s high school curriculum revisions sparked widespread public concern.Footnote 3 The Ministry’s refusal to disclose decision-making materials—meeting records, videos, committee lists, and opinions—citing “personal data protection” and “committee member safety” catalysed the 2014 Anti-Black Box Curriculum Movement and 2015 student protest (Hsieh and Lin, Reference Hsieh and Lin2014; Pajunen, Reference Pajunen2015). Furthermore, the 2014 Sunflower Movement mobilised hundreds of students and civic activists who occupied the Legislative Yuan for 24 days to protest the expedited passage of the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement with China (Fan, Reference Fan2014; Wu, Reference Wu, Lee and Sing2019, pp. 217–8). The movements catalysed broader reform agendas for open government and parliament transparency. However, the following transparency initiatives lacked enforceable data disclosure rights and relied instead on individual agencies’ discretionary commitment to proactive data release (Liu, Reference Liu2017, pp. 299–300; Tseng and Lee, Reference Tseng and Lee2017; Weng, Reference Weng2020, pp. 18–9). This structural limitation reinforced institutional control over information flows.
Constitutional judgements and social movements demonstrate law’s constraining capacity. Yet PDPA-FOGIL asymmetries persist. Emergency declarations and efficiency narratives provide legal justification for surveillance expansion operating within, not against, democratic frameworks. Agencies need not violate constitutional principles to concentrate data power. PDPA provisions authorise extensive collection for “statutory purposes,” and FOGIL exemptions protect “administrative execution.”
2.3 Democratic data hegemony
This historical-legal analysis provides insights for understanding data hegemony in democratic contexts. First, surveillance continuity operates through institutional adaptation, not technological determinism. Taiwan’s information state persisted across colonial rule, authoritarianism, and democracy by transforming mechanisms from household inspections to algorithmic processing, while maintaining concentrated data control. Digital technologies enable rather than cause this continuity. Historical surveillance infrastructure created institutional capacity, legal precedents, and normalised population monitoring that contemporary digital systems exploit.
Second, democratic legal frameworks create contested terrain rather than absolute constraints. Constitutional judgements and social movements demonstrate law’s constraining capacity. Yet the NHI database operated for decades before constitutional intervention, and PDPA-FOGIL asymmetries persist despite reforms. Legal contestation matters profoundly but operates within power structures that favour institutional control over data. Democratic frameworks both enable contestation through constitutional challenges and control through interpretative authority concentration.
Third, emergency powers and service provision represent critical mechanisms through which data hegemony operates within democracies. As shown in the following sections, Wanhua’s COVID-19 measures demonstrate emergency power concentration: the law authorises a “necessary measures” provision, which justified comprehensive telecommunications surveillance without clear statutory limits. Kaohsiung’s concert economy reveals the normalisation of service provision: “smart city” policies and economic development frame population monitoring as technological efficiency serving public interests. Both operate through legal frameworks ostensibly serving democratic values (public health, economic prosperity, and urban management) while concentrating data control and enabling systematic spatial power.
Taiwan’s lawscape thus exemplifies how informational cities develop within democratic constraints while maintaining data hegemony through legal-technological assemblages. The persistence of colonial-authoritarian surveillance logic within democratic institutions creates conditions for both cases. Wanhua’s emergency surveillance found legal justification in pandemic frameworks while Kaohsiung’s concert monitoring operates through smart city policies and administrative regulations. Understanding contemporary data governance requires examining not whether legal frameworks exist but how institutional actors interpret legal authority through telecommunications infrastructure to concentrate data control. This contested terrain simultaneously enables institutional data hegemony and preserves spaces for community contestation through constitutional challenges and civil society mobilisation.
3. Coercive data hegemony: Wanhua’s COVID-19 surveillance
3.1 Surveillance systems creating digital enclaves
The COVID-19 outbreak in Taipei’s Wanhua district in May 2021 demonstrates how data hegemony operates through emergency legal frameworks to create “digital enclaves”—zones where algorithmic categorisation produces spatial exclusion without physical barriers. The Central Epidemic Command Centre (CECC) deployed comprehensive surveillance under the Communicable Disease Control Act (CDCA) (傳染病防治法) and the Special Act for Prevention, Relief and Revitalisation Measures for Severe Pneumonia with Novel Pathogens (hereinafter Special Act) (嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎防治及紓困振興特別條例). Article 7 of the Special Act authorised “necessary measures” without defining limits, which had been criticised as a “blank check” for extensive governmental power without oversight (TAHR, 2020).
The CECC integrated four surveillance systems. First, electronic fence (電子圍籬) used cell-site location information (CSLI) triangulation to monitor quarantined individuals and to trigger automatic police alerts when the individuals’ phones moved beyond designated zones (Executive Yuan R.O.C. (Taiwan), 2021). The system employed three-point triangulation. When a mobile phone connects to cell towers, the intersection of signal ranges from multiple towers determines the approximate location (Chen, Reference Chenn.d.). Movement beyond geo-fenced boundaries, which are defined by latitude–longitude coordinates encompassing quarantine addresses, generated immediate notifications to local police stations (Chen, Reference Chenn.d.; Li, Reference Li2020a, p. 2; Liao, Reference Liao2021; Chiou, Reference Chiou2020, pp. 136–139). It enables real-time enforcement without physical surveillance.
Second, SMS contact tracing required QR code scans at all public venues, including shops, restaurants, and transportation hubs, to record visits and track social interactions (Li, Reference Li2020b, p. 39; Lee, Reference Leen.d.). Each venue displayed unique QR codes; scanning transmitted user phone numbers, timestamps, and location data to central databases. When infections were confirmed, the system identified all individuals present at the same venues within relevant timeframes and enabled rapid contact notification.
Third, geo-targeted alerts sent approximately 600,000 SMS messages to mobile phones whose signals had contacted cell towers within Wanhua district boundaries during the outbreak period (Chen, Jiang and Zhang, Reference Chen, Jiang and Zhang2021). Unlike voluntary contact-tracing apps, this system required neither user installation nor consent. Telecommunications infrastructure automatically identified phones based on network connection logs. The CECC accessed historical cell tower connection data from major carriers, identified all unique phone numbers connecting to Wanhua towers during designated periods, and transmitted mass alerts designating recipients as potential contacts requiring testing.
Fourth, NHI cards annotations flagged individuals deemed high-risk based solely on their spatial presence in Wanhua and generated automatic alerts to healthcare providers and local police when cards were scanned (Wu, Reference Wu2021; Xie and Hong, Reference Xie and Hong2021). The NHI system covers over 99% of Taiwan’s population with unique identifier cards required for all healthcare access. The system provided infrastructure for population-wide marking. Annotations appeared as digital flags in healthcare provider systems when cards were scanned for service, visible to staff but not cardholders themselves. Critically, individuals remained unaware of the annotations until they experienced provider scrutiny or service refusal (Zhou, Reference Zhou2021).
These systems created “digital enclaves” through data-based categorisation, producing spatial effects. Geo-targeted alerts defined who was “inside” the outbreak zone based on telecommunications infrastructure rather than physical presence or actual exposure. The NHI card annotations created healthcare access barriers without physical restrictions, yet digital markers triggered healthcare provider refusal across the city. One woman with a severe toothache was rejected by three dental clinics over two days despite having no COVID symptoms; providers refused service based solely on her card’s annotation indicating Wanhua presence (Hong, Reference Hong2021). The boundary was informational, and the exclusion was spatial.
The enforcement mechanism demonstrates how data architecture structures spatial power through distributed decisions. No central authority commanded healthcare providers to refuse Wanhua-associated patients. Instead, the NHI annotation system structured thousands of independent encounters through four steps: (1) card scans triggered system alerts visible to staff but not cardholders; (2) alerts appeared as the most salient information at the point of service; (3) healthcare providers exercised “professional judgement” shaped by visible risk markers; and (4) systematic exclusion patterns emerged city-wide and the woman with a toothache rejected by three clinics exemplifies systematic rather than isolated discrimination.
When identical data architecture structures decisions across hundreds of independent providers, distributed discretion produces de facto boundaries as automated constraints. Each provider made individual choices, yet the system’s architecture ensured those choices aggregated into spatial exclusion affecting entire communities. This represents infrastructural power that is not organising coercion from above, but structuring decision environments across distributed actors to produce systematic spatial effects. The digital enclaves operated through what appeared to be professional discretion but functioned infrastructurally through the reliable connection between annotation and refusal across the healthcare system.
3.2 Algorithmic profiling and collective harms
Digital surveillance amplified Wanhua’s pre-existing place-based stigma. The district historically inhabited marginalised populations—significant homeless communities and tea houses where elderly migrant women employed in sex work. Media dubbed Wuahua as the pandemic’s “loophole” (破口), which combined digital tracking data with visible surveillance infrastructure (testing stations, police presence, and broadcast alerts) to intensify neighbourhood stigma (Dai, Reference Dai2024; Zhang and Jiang, Reference Zhang and Jiang2021).
This produced collective harms beyond individual privacy violations. First, algorithmic profiling reinforced spatial inequalities by categorising individuals solely based on geographic association. The CECC flagged anyone whose phone had contacted Wanhua towers, creating guilt by location that transcended individual health status or behaviour (Jin, Dai and Li, Reference Jin, Dai and Li2021, pp. 43–4). It produced group-level categorisation affecting the entire community’s perceptions regardless of actual exposure risk.
Second, data-driven resource allocation produced healthcare inequality. The annotation system functioned as informal triage that deprioritised patients linked to Wanhua, and effectively created internal healthcare boundaries based on digital footprints rather than medical needs (Dai, Reference Dai2021, p. 13; Hong, Reference Hong2021; Wang, Reference Wang2021). Medical staff who saw annotations exercised discretion in refusing non-emergency services, effectively excluding Wanhua-associated patients from routine care. This transformed the city’s healthcare geography, not through formal policies restricting Wanhua residents’ movement, but through informational mechanisms that triggered provider decisions systematically denying access.
Third, surveillance visibility deepened spatial stigmatisation. Detailed disclosure of patients’ movement histories, which were published by CECC and amplified by the media, violated individual privacy. It produced community-wide stigmatisation affecting all workers in similar establishments regardless of personal health status (Jin, Dai and Li, Reference Jin, Dai and Li2021, pp. 44–45; Dai, Reference Dai2024). The combination of surveillance apparatus visibility (testing stations, police checkpoints, and broadcast alerts) with media framing created what Delaney terms “nomospheric situation” (Delaney, Reference Delaney2011, pp. 24–7). The legal authority, spatial control, and social meaning coalesced into a new normative order that marked Wanhua as a dangerous space.
Digital enclaves extended beyond Wanhua through algorithmic connections. In Changhua County’s grape industry, contact tracing identified a seller who delivered to Wanhua. Rumours that “grapes might carry the virus” triggered market collapse. The affected family faced harassment, including vandalism, threats, and photos circulated on social media (Kong and Cao, Reference Kong and Cao2021a; Kong and Cao, Reference Kong and Cao2021b). Algorithmic connections through supply chains translated into economic vulnerability and collective shaming that extended hundreds of kilometres beyond the outbreak zone.
Furthermore, Maoli County announced a sweeping “migrant worker ban” (移工禁足令), which confined all migrant workers to dormitories outside work hours. This exemplified algorithmic group punishment and affected thousands based on population category rather than individual exposure (Yang, Reference Yang2021). Though later deemed unauthorised, the restrictions imposed spatial segregation and collective stigma. Web activity monitoring and targeted messaging campaigns extended surveillance into digital spaces and produced racialised governance without explicit discriminatory laws (Xie and Hong, Reference Xie and Hong2021; Yang, Reference Yang2021). This approach mirrors Singapore’s differential treatment of migrant workers during COVID-19 (Das and Zhang, Reference Das and Zhang2020, pp. 3–4).
3.3 Regional comparison: divergent lawscapes during pandemic
Regional comparison illuminates how legal-cultural contexts shape surveillance outcomes despite similar technological capacities. South Korea integrated 27 data sources from credit card transactions, mobile Global Positioning System data, and CCTV footage under its Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act (IDCPA) (Ryan, Reference Ryan2020, pp. 384–5). IDCPA provides explicit legal authorisation for comprehensive data collection during public health emergencies after the 2015 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) experience. Public opinion supported intrusive measures: nearly half the population (49.2%) wanted more detailed patient information despite privacy concerns (Kim, Reference Kim2022, p. 2). This acceptance reflected memory of MERS, which created a strong public consensus around “safety first” approaches to pandemic management (Fendos, Reference Fendos2020). However, publishing detailed travel logs of confirmed cases led to social shaming and privacy violations when citizens identified individuals (Kim, Reference Kim2022, p. 2; Hwang, Reference Hwang2020; Fendos, Reference Fendos2020). It demonstrates how consensual surveillance created harms.
Singapore’s TraceTogether system shifted from voluntary to mandatory for entering public venues by December 2020 (Ong and Loo, Reference Ong, Loo, Findlay, Ford, Seah and Thampapillai2022, p. 1). High adoption rates (over 70%) demonstrated comprehensive surveillance networks enabled by technological infrastructure and administrative authority (Choo, Reference Choo2020; Ong and Loo, Reference Ong, Loo, Findlay, Ford, Seah and Thampapillai2022, p. 2; Liu, Reference Liu2021). Controversy erupted when the government admitted that police could access TraceTogether data for criminal investigations, which mirrors Taiwan’s experience with the police allegedly attempting to access SMS data for criminal investigations (Sun, Reference Sun2021; Ong and Loo, Reference Ong, Loo, Findlay, Ford, Seah and Thampapillai2022, p. 4). The mandatory venue entry requirement created spatial boundaries between surveilled and non-surveilled populations. Relatively muted public response (only about 1,100 users opted out following the disclosure of police access) reflects “pragmatic acceptance” in Singapore’s political culture—a willingness to trade privacy for perceived security and public good (Baharudin, Reference Baharudin2021; Lee and Lee, Reference Lee and Lee2022, p. 85).Footnote 4
China’s digital authoritarianism provides an instructive contrast. Taylor documents how China pursued a defensive internet strategy until 2012, which views the internet as both an economic engine and a political risk (Taylor, Reference Taylor2022, p. 51). China’s censorship apparatus aims to prevent organisation over politically sensitive issues, which creates what Roberts calls porous, penetrable and friction-driven censorship (Roberts, Reference Roberts2018, pp. 5–8). Following COVID-19, China deployed comprehensive health code systems integrating vast datasets to control population movement. Unlike Taiwan’s temporary emergency measures generating civil society pushback (as discussed in Section 3.4), China’s surveillance became permanent infrastructure embedded within authoritarian governance with absence of mechanisms for legal challenge (Taylor, Reference Taylor2022, p. 39).
The critical distinction lies in lawscape configuration rather than technological capacity. China’s surveillance operates through explicit state control, without procedural constraints or avenues for civil society contestation. Taiwan’s democratic framework created genuine legal constraints, which demonstrate retrospective accountability mechanisms. Yet Taiwan shows that even democratic lawscape enables data hegemony when emergency powers concentrate interpretative authority (Chiou, Reference Chiou2020). The difference is that Taiwan’s legal terrain preserves contestation spaces through constitutional challenges and procedural contestation which are foreclosed in China’s authoritarian framework.
This regional comparison reveals that digital enclaves represent neither technological inevitability nor simple authoritarian control. Similar technologies generate vastly different spatial and social outcomes depending on legal frameworks, political culture, and civil society’s engagement. Digital enclaves thus represent contested lawscapes where communities, institutions, and legal frameworks continuously negotiate surveillance boundaries.
3.4 Community responses and legal contestation
Taiwan’s civil society mounted sustained legal challenges to surveillance expansion during COVID-19. Organisations like the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), and the Judicial Reform Foundation documented legal overreach, including a lack of clear statutory authorisation for telecommunications surveillance, absence of exit strategies for emergency powers, and due process violations in data collections (TAHR, 2021; TAHR, 2020). These organisations created counter-narratives preserving space for democratic accountability during the emergency by publicly documenting how CECC policies exceeded statutory authority and questioning the necessity and proportionality of surveillance measures.
Success appeared in subsequent legal developments. The 2025 Supreme Administrative Court’s ruling in the Hao Hsin Kan Clinic (好心肝診所) case found that CECC policies announced only through press conferences lacked legal enforceability, directly challenging CECC’s informal governance (Supreme Administrative Court (R.O.C), 2025; Chen, Reference Chen2025). This ruling retroactively questioned numerous pandemic measures implemented without formal administrative procedure.
Community organisations in Wanhua also appropriated digital infrastructure for autonomous purposes. Local organisations like Homeless Taiwan Association (芒草心) and Taiwan Community Practice Association (台灣社區實踐協會) created mutual aid networks by using mobile communications, social media platforms, and geographic information systems (GIS) to coordinate resource distribution, provide emotional support, and document government failures in ways that challenged official narratives about the pandemic response (Jin, Dai and Li, Reference Jin, Dai and Li2021, pp. 42–53; Jin, Reference Jin2021). While communities did not directly appropriate CECC’s surveillance technologies—cell tower data and NHI systems remained under government control—they built parallel digital infrastructure by using similar telecommunications infrastructure and tools (mobile apps, GIS, and social media) for autonomous purposes. This created coexisting digital networks for state surveillance and for community mutual aid.
These organisations became “technological intermediaries” that used digital platforms to connect vulnerable populations with resources while protecting community members from direct surveillance exposure (Jin, Dai and Li, Reference Jin, Dai and Li2021, pp. 42–52; Jin, Reference Jin2021). The concept of “self-help” in community response created space for autonomous action within heavily surveilled environments. These parallel networks operated alongside government surveillance infrastructure and demonstrated how digital technologies enable both state control and community self-organisation within the same urban environment and data governance. Community capacity to build autonomous networks within surveilled environments demonstrates resilience and tactical adaptation.
The case demonstrates that coercive data hegemony, which generates visible harms, enables resistance through multiple responses: legal challenges that establish procedural constraints, civil society documentation that creates accountability pressure, and community networks that provide autonomy. Visibility matters when surveillance operates during a crisis with apparent harms (healthcare denial, spatial stigmatisation, and economic losses). It becomes politically contestable despite the concentration of emergency power. It contrasts with Kaohsiung’s service-integrated data hegemony in Section 4, where surveillance is embedded in service provision and forecloses contestation by creating satisfaction rather than visible harms.
4. Service-integrated data hegemony: Kaohsiung’s concert economy
4.1 Concert surveillance infrastructure
Between 2023 and 2025, Kaohsiung hosted major international concerts, e.g., BLACKPINK, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, and Coldplay, attracting millions of attendees and generating over NT＄5.7 billion in reported economic value (CNA, 2025). The government celebrates dispersing 90,000 BLACKPINK concert attendees within one hour, optimising bathroom gender ratios, and channelling consumption through targeted vouchers (Xu, Reference Xu2023). This case demonstrates how data hegemony operates through voluntary participation and consumer satisfaction, and further normalises comprehensive surveillance through spectacular management of technological competence and economic success.
Kaohsiung’s concert management manifests through its “Smart City Dashboard” integrating multiple surveillance technologies. At its core lies Cellular Vehicle Probe (CVP) technology, which analyses mobile signal data to track population movements within 50-by-50-metre grid units (Xu, Reference Xu2023; Kaohsiung City Government, n.d.). CVP collects connection patterns between phones and cell towers across all major carriers and enables real-time tracking of crowd density, movement directions, and congestion points without legally requiring individual consent or device installation (Chen, Chen and Shi, Reference Chen, Chen and Shi2019, p. 5).
The dashboard integrates additional sources, including AI-powered crowd detection that analyses video feeds from venue cameras, transportation network integration that monitors metro ridership, traffic conditions, and parking occupancy in real time. During the March 2023 BLACKPINK concert, CVP processed location data from over 10.52 million mobile subscribers to monitor 90,000 attendees. The concert management system demonstrates how data exert force through real-time infrastructural adjustment. Crowd density data trigger immediate spatial interventions. For example, shuttles arranges and metro operations adjust train frequencies to prevent overcrowding at the venues; traffic control modifies signal timing to extend green lights on dispersal routes while shortening them on congested approaches; police redirects pedestrians at algorithmically identified concentration points and temporarily blocks congested routes while opening alternative routes (Xu, Reference Xu2023; Kaohsiung City Government, n.d.; Liu et al., Reference Liu, Lin, Cai, Lin, Hong, Wu, Liu and Lv2019; Tanveer et al., Reference Tanveer, Kashmiri, Naeem, Yan, Qi, Rizvi, Wang and Lu2020). These interventions operate through orchestrated infrastructure responses to population-level data patterns rather than individual guidance. The system cleared attendees within one hour through coordinated adjustments that physically channelled movement through transportation availability, traffic signal timing, and police deployments. It demonstrates that data operate as a force on infrastructure control rather than merely informing decisions.
Critically, officials have demographic composition data about audiences. For instance, the data showed that 70% of BLACKPINK attendees came from outside Kaohsiung, with predominantly young females (Xu, Reference Xu2023). This enables facilitating optimisation and targeted economic interventions. While precise technical sources remain unclear in official documentation, plausible mechanisms include CVP integrated with telecommunications carrier subscriber data, real-time linkages, real-name ticketing, and historical attendance and consumption patterns. This demographic knowledge enables micro-targeted governance: bathroom facilities reconfigured for predicted gender ratios, voucher programs designating fashion districts for young female audiences, and consumption channelled toward algorithmically selected commercial zones (Cai, Reference Cai2024).
The opacity of data integration itself constitutes a control mechanism. Officials celebrate the outcomes of safe dispersal, optimised facilities, and efficient crowd management, while the technical architecture that enabled such knowledge remains undisclosed. This knowledge asymmetry exemplifies data hegemony: the city controls both surveillance infrastructure and its public representation. Citizens and concert attendees experience optimised services without understanding the comprehensive monitoring that enables such efficiency. It is a hallmark of service-integrated data hegemony, where visible benefits obscure surveillance mechanisms.
This infrastructure exemplifies three mechanisms of data hegemony operating simultaneously: comprehensive data accumulation (real-time flows, demographic compositions, and consumption patterns); infrastructure control (CVP access from carrier data, integrated transportation monitoring); and interpretative authority through “smart city” policies and public–private cooperation, which frames population monitoring as technological efficiency serving public interests rather than surveillance. Integration within entertainment and commerce normalises comprehensive data collection as competent governance to deliver genuine improvements. However, it simultaneously forecloses critical examination of surveillance expansion.
4.2 Disciplinary mechanisms: vouchers as spatial steering
The Business District and Night Market Voucher (商圈夜市優惠券) program distributes NT＄50 paper vouchers redeemable at more than 400 selected businesses across 40 designated districts (Li, Reference Li2025b). Unlike technical constraints that prevent actions, vouchers operate through economic incentives. Concert attendees can shop anywhere but receive financial benefits only at participating vendors, which are promoted by designated public shuttle services. Consumers scan QR codes on paper vouchers for redemption, transmitting transaction data—location, timestamp, and purchase amount—to municipal systems for vendor reimbursement.
The voucher apparatus demonstrates infrastructural power through economic steering rather than technical prevention. While vouchers do not physically prevent shopping at non-participating businesses, they function infrastructurally by making designated consumption locations financially advantageous. The behaviour is structured through incentive design. Concert attendees experience vouchers as beneficial discounts while the system channels consumption toward designated zones, algorithmically directing foot traffic and revenue distribution across the city’s commercial geography. The mechanism operates through voluntary participation, incentivised by financial rewards linked to the city’s data-driven traffic arrangements. It demonstrates how data architecture can structure spatial behaviour without coercion.
Yet vouchers simultaneously function as disciplinary technology embedded within benefit. Disney World’s gardens and fountains serve both as aesthetic objects and as mechanisms directing visitors toward or away from particular locations (Shearing and Stenning, Reference Shearing, Stenning, Doob and Greenspan1985, pp. 342–4). Similarly, Kaohsiung vouchers deliver genuine economic benefits (NT＄50 discounts, 30% vendor revenue increases) while steering spatial behaviour (Wang, Reference Wang2024). Vendors gain revenue, visitors benefit, and the government achieves spatial order and city branding. Attendees willingly comply with algorithmic steering while experiencing it as helpful navigation. They internalise algorithmic preferences as their own desires and consumed in targeted zones while perceiving choice rather than channelling.
This creates “consensual control” (Shearing and Stenning, Reference Shearing, Stenning, Doob and Greenspan1985, p. 344), by which subjects willingly comply while acknowledging governmental concern. The system operates infrastructurally through genuine improvements (safety, efficiency, and economic stimulus), making monitoring feel like competent governance. Where Wanhua’s visible surveillance generated contestation, Kaohsiung’s embedded monitoring forecloses opposition through satisfaction. Metro-adjacent establishments designated as “participating vendors” thrive, while peripheral businesses remain excluded despite their physical proximity to the venues. The voucher system demonstrates service-integrated data hegemony, which operates through infrastructural power that delivers real benefits while embedding comprehensive population tracking within entertainment.
4.3 Embedded control and invisible exclusions
Kaohsiung’s disciplinary control operates by embedding surveillance within service infrastructure, making presence imperceptible while effects remain pervasive (Shearing and Stenning, Reference Shearing, Stenning, Doob and Greenspan1985, p. 344). CVP monitoring functions simultaneously as crowd-safety technology and comprehensive population-tracking. Bathroom optimisation serves both gender equity—addressing the historical inadequacy of female facilities—and demographic profiling (Cai, Reference Cai2024; Lai, Reference Lai2024). Real-name ticketing at certain concerts (controlled by the event organisers) prevents scalping while capturing identities for subsequent tracking. This integration is genuine for safety improvement, facilities optimisation, and ticket-scalping reduces yet surveillance embeds within improvements and becomes imperceptible beneath service delivery.
Yet systematic exclusions persist invisibly. Real-name ticketing excludes populations without government identification, regardless of their ability to pay. Voucher distribution at venues excludes neighbouring residents. Those who live in affected commercial districts receive no economic benefits despite experiencing event-related disruptions—noise, crowds, parking difficulties, and street closures. Only ticket-holders attending events receive vouchers and discounts, creating spatial inequality in which economic stimulus flows to mobile event attendees rather than to stationary local residents who bear the externalities. Designated business creates spatial disparities. Metro-adjacent establishments receive traffic through voucher restrictions, while peripheral businesses remain invisible despite physical proximity to the venues. Binary demographic profiling—from whatever source officials obtain gender data—potentially renders non-binary attendees invisible and excludes them from facility planning considerations.
These exclusions remain imperceptible to beneficiaries. Metro-adjacent participating businesses experience substantial revenue increases. Female attendees experience shorter bathroom queues through gender-ratio optimisation. Event attendees receive vouchers as apparent municipal gifts. Visible benefits obscure systematic exclusions based on ticket access, residential location, business geography, and demographic categorisation. This illustrates the feature of service-integrated data hegemony: delivering genuine improvements to visible beneficiary populations while rendering systematic algorithmic exclusions invisible. It also prevents recognition of collective vulnerabilities and spatial inequalities structured through the data architecture.
4.4 Contestation foreclosed through satisfaction
No documented, organised opposition exists. This reflects successful disciplinary subject formation through subtle mechanisms. First, satisfaction-based legitimation creates compliance through demonstrated competence—crowd management, facility resource allocation, and businesses thriving (Su, Reference Su2024). Where Wanhua’s visible exclusions generated mobilisation, Kaohsiung’s preferential navigation creates satisfaction. Those excluded experience absence without recognising systematic algorithmic exclusion.
Second, embedded behavioural steering produces subjects who internalise data-driven spatial norms as common sense. Crowd management shapes movement patterns; voucher incentives determine consumption locations. Individual subjects experience algorithmic steering as personal preference without perceiving external behavioural modification. Media praise for “seamless integration” (Su, Reference Su2024) reveals this disciplinary effectiveness.
Third, the consumer framework of city governance prevents collective analysis. Concert attendees experience surveillance individually as ticket-holders, rather than collectively as citizens. When the 2025 MJ116 hip-hop concert resulted in dangerous overcrowding, criticism focused on poor planning, not surveillance expansion (Li, Reference Li2025a). Reports of poor sound quality and ticket scalping generate consumer complaints rather than surveillance concerns (Yang, Reference Yang2024; Zheng, Reference Zheng2025). The city responded to ticket scalping by expanding real-name requirements. It demonstrates how consumer grievances legitimise surveillance expansion.
Independent travel blogs warn that hailing taxis near venues is “extremely difficult,” and advise walking significant distances before attempting rides (Tripool, 2025). This informal knowledge-sharing suggests pragmatic adaptation rather than opposition. The consumer framework transforms infrastructure failures into individual navigation problems which require personal solutions, not collective challenges on governance.
Questions remain unaddressed in public discourse: who benefits from facilities optimisation potentially excluding non-binary attendees and non-attendees? Who authorised trading continuous population tracking for faster dispersal and optimised business traffic? What are the temporal consequences when infrastructure enabling concert management today becomes infrastructure that could potentially monitor political contest tomorrow? The absence of public debate reveals how service-integrated data hegemony operates: by delivering genuine benefits that satisfy the majority while rendering systematic exclusions imperceptible, it prevents formation of collective consciousness necessary for democratic contestation.
The absence of contestation is theoretically significant. It illuminates how data hegemony adapts to democratic contexts by operating through efficiency and satisfaction rather than coercion. Kaohsiung’s “smart city” policies and regulations embed surveillance within entertainment. Its lawscape creates conditions to foreclose contestation by producing satisfied subjects unaware of systematic monitoring, steering, and exclusions. Hopefully, the digital infrastructure preserves the possibility of future appropriation if communities develop awareness. The temporal dimension thus matters: contestation may emerge as communities recognise vulnerabilities initially obscured by satisfaction.
5. Discussion: contrasting mechanisms of data hegemony
5.1 Coercive versus service-integrated data hegemony
The case studies reveal data hegemony operating through two different models. Wanhua case demonstrates coercive data hegemony. It deploys visible surveillance (electronic fences, SMS tracing, geo-alerts, and NHI annotations) under emergency powers and creates visible harms (healthcare denial, spatial stigmatisation, and economic losses). These apparent harms catalyse contestation through civil society challenges, community mutual aid networks, and subsequent court rulings that constrain emergency powers.
Kaohsiung case demonstrates service-integrated data hegemony. It embeds surveillance (CVP tracking, demographic profiling, and voucher channelling) within service provision, which is framed as “smart city” efficiency. It aims to bring genuine improvements (efficient crowd dispersal, optimised facilities, and economic benefits). These improvements foreclosed contestations through satisfaction and consumer frameworks, preventing collective consciousness. Systematic exclusions persist, including populations lacking access, peripheral businesses receiving no algorithmic designation, and binary profiling potentially excluding non-binary attendees, although these exclusions remain imperceptible to beneficiaries.
Surveillance visibility shapes response possibilities. Visible surveillance creates apparent harms or collective vulnerabilities that enable mobilisation despite emergency powers. Invisible surveillance embedded within improvement narratives forecloses contestation by preventing recognition of exclusion and collective vulnerabilities.
The cases illuminate different mechanisms of infrastructural power. Wanhua’s COVID measures, including NHI card annotations, operated through networked professional discretion. Kaohsiung’s infrastructure operated through orchestrated mechanisms. Both create functional boundaries where one through information structuring networked professional discretion, and the other through coordinated real-time control, economic steering, and predictive pre-positioning.
5.2 Infrastructural orchestration and disciplinary power
Notably, Kaohsiung illuminates how data exerts force through Foucauldian disciplinary mechanisms. Just as Disney World’s facilities channel visitors while appearing as amenities (Shearing and Stenning, Reference Shearing, Stenning, Doob and Greenspan1985, pp. 342–7), Kaohsiung’s orchestrated infrastructure directs behaviour while delivering benefits. CVP enables crowd management appearing as safety. Demographic profiling enables facility optimisation appearing as equity. Vouchers channel consumption as an economic stimulus. Real-time infrastructure adjustments physically channel movement, appearing as responsive management. Subjects internalise algorithmic preferences as personal choices and experience surveillance as service. Data’s force operates through infrastructural design that makes compliance easier, more beneficial, and more pleasurable. It manifests disciplinary power through satisfaction rather than coercion.
Both cases reveal data exerting spatial force through infrastructural orchestration—coordinated systems operating across temporal scales and multiple mechanisms simultaneously—yet producing divergent political possibilities. Wanhua’s orchestration (telecommunications surveillance, NHI systems, testing apparatus, and police enforcement) remained visible enough that civil society could document integration, identify responsible authorities, and challenge legality through constitutional arguments and public mobilisation. Kaohsiung’s orchestration (CVP tracking, demographic profiling, real-time infrastructure adjustment, economic incentives, and predictive resource allocation) operates through opacity. The technical architecture remains undisclosed. Responsible parties diffuse across public–private partnerships. Legal justifications frame monitoring as smart governance serving democratic values (safety, equity, and economic development) rather than surveillance to be oversight.
Data hegemony thus operates through contrasting disciplinary modalities which produce different political possibilities within the same democratic lawscape. Coercive data hegemony paradoxically preserves democratic contestation by making power relationships perceptible despite the exercise of emergency powers. Service-integrated data hegemony forecloses democratic contestation by preventing collective recognition of vulnerabilities: subjects experience satisfaction rather than harm, efficiency rather than control, and personalised service rather than comprehensive monitoring. Service-integrated data hegemony thus makes demands for transparency or oversight politically incoherent when populations cannot perceive challenges requiring governance response.
6. Conclusion
This article examined how concentrated data control creates spatial power in Taiwan’s data and urban governance through two contrasting models. Wanhua’s COVID-19 surveillance deployed comprehensive monitoring under emergency powers, which created visible harms that generated documented community responses through legal challenges and civil society mobilisation. Kaohsiung’s concert economy embedded surveillance within service provision for genuine improvements, thereby foreclosed opposition through satisfaction. The divergence shows that data hegemony’s effects depend on surveillance visibility and experienced harm, not on power concentration alone.
This study aims to advance legal geography scholarship in three ways. First, it addresses gaps in traditional frameworks. Individual privacy approaches emphasise consent and privacy protections but are still limited regarding collective harms when algorithms categorise entire neighbourhoods. State-surveillance studies focus on state-centric control and the public–private nexus, yet they inadequately theorise democratic contexts where surveillance serves ostensible public interests. Here, data hegemony captures how concentrated control operates through both coercive and service-integrated mechanisms via comprehensive data accumulation, infrastructure control, and interpretative authority.
Second, digital enclaves illuminate how algorithmic categorisation produces material spatial effects without physical barriers. Unlike traditional enclaves defined by walls, digital enclaves operate through functional boundaries which determine service access and resource distribution. This advances legal geography by revealing how law, space, and technology co-constitute in the digital era. Taiwan’s lawscape demonstrates that they materialise together rather than law merely regulating pre-existing spaces, or vice versa.
Third, the analysis reveals conditions that enable or foreclose community responses. Community mobilisation depends not merely on surveillance intensity but on visibility and experienced harm. Visible surveillance that generates apparent injustice enables the recognition of collective vulnerabilities necessary for contestation. Embedded surveillance delivering genuine improvements that operates opaquely forecloses opposition by preventing collective recognition of vulnerabilities.
Taiwan’s COVID-19 surveillance experience illuminates broader Asian urban governance patterns while revealing how legal-political context shapes surveillance outcomes. Comparison with Singapore’s centralised approach and South Korea’s explicit emergency powers shows that similar technologies generate vastly different outcomes depending on legal frameworks and civil society capacity. Unlike China’s unified authoritarian framework foreclosing challenges, Taiwan’s democratic lawscape preserves spaces for contestation through constitutional review and procedural rights. Yet democratic frameworks also enable data hegemony when emergency declarations and satisfaction narratives justify surveillance expansion operating within constitutional principles.
The findings propose three implications. First, democratic institutions must make embedded surveillance visible through mandated data governance transparency and genuine public oversight. Second, legal framework should consider establishing community-level remedies for affected populations to challenge algorithmic categorisations which produce spatial stigmatisation. Third, service-integrated data hegemony presents particular challenges because populations experience satisfaction rather than harm. It makes transparency demands politically difficult. Effective democratic oversight requires proactive transparency mechanisms rather than post-hoc complaint-based systems. As Asian cities increasingly deploy comprehensive “smart” governance ostensibly serving public interests, the conditions enabling communities to contest data hegemony remain critical for both scholarship and practice.
Acknowledgements
The authors have greatly benefited from the insights from the anonymous reviwers and the participants at the 2025 Workshop on “Law and Geography in Urban Asia” hosted by the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. We would also like to express our special gratitude to the NTUST Institute Research Funds (IRF) for funding this project (NTUST-PA-114-004). The views we present in this article belong to us alone and do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of any individuals mentioned earlier.
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