After several rounds of public consultation, the government has introduced the new Personal Data Protection Bill in Parliament.
Industry watchers said the provisions in the Bill will bring about a sea change in the way organisations use personal information of individuals for tele-marketing.
The Bill also spells out the penalties and these include fines, jail terms or both.
Mr Christopher De Souza, a member of the Government Parliamentary Committee (GPC) for Law and Home Affairs, said personal data is, by its very nature, sensitive. He said the Bill is timely and a good legislative start to deterring the abuse of personal data.
Organisations which have personal data like one’s name, identity card number and even photograph, would have to think twice before passing on the information to others, once the Personal Data Protection Bill is passed.
The law will regulate the collection, use and disclosure of personal data by organisations as it will spell out that such agencies have to safeguard the personal data they possess.
Individuals will also have to be informed of the purposes for using the personal data.
Partner at Rajah & Tan LLP, Steve Tan Keng Joo, said: “Essentially, it is to protect an individual’s personal data and how that can be used by third parties without his consent.”
“The Bill will certainly prevent organisations from indiscriminately buying personal data from another organisation and these other organisations selling personal data of individuals. It will also ensure that before an organisation legitimately uses an individual’s personal data, the individual is actually informed of the purpose of that use,” he added.
“If the personal data of a person is being put together for a lucky draw contest, then once that purpose is over, that personal data has to be destroyed.”
To enforce the law, there will be a Personal Data Protection Commission.
A key concept of the legislation is the idea of the Do Not Call Registry. The Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) said that this proposal received strong support during the public consultation exercise.
Individuals can opt out of marketing calls and SMS-es by signing up with the Registry.
Partner at Rajah & Tan LLP, Rajesh Sreenivasan, said: “For telemarketers, they will need some time to get familiar and understand how they will need to amend their marketing campaign to be compliant with the Do Not Call Registry.
“It means telemarketers will now have to be a little more responsible in the way they contact customers, and individuals are empowered to being able to ask for their numbers to be removed. The types of teething problems that may crop up would be individuals who fall through the gap, some errors in maintaining their databases accurately.
“I don’t expect there would be a problem for the Registry itself but certainly for the telemarketers, if they are not diligent in ensuring they check properly with the Registry before their campaigns, then there could be errors that may occur. But over time, this can be ironed out.”
Source : Channel NewsAsia – 10 Sep 2012