Impact of Personal Data Protection Laws

Impend the Protection Data Protection Bill 2009 (PDPB) into law will introduce significant changes to how personal data is collected, processed, retained and transmitted by organization in Malaysia. However, scope, right and obligations prescribed by the PDPB will become more clearly defined and also evolve through the regulations, codes of practice and court decision. Organization must

now begin to examine their current policies, process, contractual rights and obligations and third party notifications which relate to personal data.

PDPB should understand the key objective to regulate the processing of personal data in the context of commercial transaction by data users and to provide a safeguard for the interest of data subjects.

However, companies and business will now need to carefully review their privacy policies for compliance with the PDPB. In particular, the Notice and Choice Principle requires all privacy policies to be in writing. However, legal standpoint data privacy is crucial. In Malaysia have communications & multimedia Act 2006, the Digital Signature Act 1997, the Electronic Commerce Act 2006, the Electronic Government Activities Act 2007, the Computer Crimes Act 1997. Latest, PDPB Act 2009 was passed by the Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara on April 5, and May 4, respectively. Following Royal Assent and gazetting, the PDPB Bill 2009 will come

 into force and making Malaysia among the first countries in Asean to introduce such legislation. We hope that the Act will assist Malaysia people more secure and assist in protection laws. 1^st question is, it’s the PDPB good enough to protect our data? Recently in news on 26 October 2011, Malaysian guys was the person who manage to wrong used 222,000 credit cards and search disclosure of US data  without permission. This shown that Malaysian people intelligent to do a wrong doing and also known well how to access data. 2^nd question is, its all act we have has covered personal data at security conditions? However, solute to Malaysian government, even our level of IT is lower then others countries, we successfully to implement act for our guidance.

There are 7 data protection principles that form the basis of protection:

• General principle
• Notice and choice principle
• Disclosure principle
• Security principle
• Retention principle
• Data Integrity principle
• Access principle

Some of the key rights of data subject under the PDPB are summarized:

• The right to information
• The right to access
• The right to convert the personal data
• The right to prevent processing that is likely to cause damage or distress
• Right to withdraw consent to the processing of personal data

The impact on Malaysia companies and business which PDPB give a rise new legal rights and obligations in connection with the employer-employee relationship, merger and acquisition transaction involving personnel issues. General guidelines to consider compliance with the PDPB where personal data is likely to be processed to:

• Managing Employee Personal Data
• Security measures for personal data protection
• Privacy policies

Article Forum: Impact of Personal Data Protection Laws

(THEEDGE MALAYSIA on July 26, 2010)