Minister wants personal info protected

The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Wed, 09/05/2007 2:17 PM

Tony Hotland, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The government is drafting a bill to protect personal data and information of every Indonesian from potential misuse and unauthorized collection.

The bill, however, will also include certain exceptions to the regulation.

State Minister for Administrative Reforms Taufiq Effendi said in his opening remarks of a seminar on the protection of personal data and information, read by his secretary Tasdiq Kinanto, that the absence of such a law had led to various violations of personal data.

The minister said this was thanks to a lack of transparency and accountability in the present government as well as a failure to set acceptable governance standards.

Personal information is generally owned by three elite groups -- bureaucrats, businesspeople and intellectual groups, Taufiq said.

""We must protect individual data and information with a law to build trust -- and eventually to revamp public service.""

The minister said the 2006 law on Civil Administration obligated the government to protect personal information, but no regulations around this law had been implemented.

Personal data including medical or financial records or anything shared had to be protected from internet and identity theft, he said.

""The data and information we provide a bank, for instance, is easily accessed by other parties, because the bank does not protect it well.""

Sudaryatmo of the Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) said the new bill would need to include sanctions against companies that shared data irresponsibly, especially if it led to losses incurred by members of the public.

""One thing this bill should have is sanctions for both the data collector and the third party if a data misuse leads to losses for the data owner,"" he said.

The government also said the role of the press would need to be included in the bill. Taufik said the press often published stories that were an invasion of privacy and this would need to be dealt with.

The set of exceptions that could legally justify trespassing personal data included the interest of national security, disclosure of a crime, tax, legal process, research, history and statistics.

Information or data that has been ruled previously as public would also be excepted.

The government and the House of Representatives are currently deliberating a bill on freedom of information, which would oblige public institutions and other activities financed by tax, including state-owned enterprises, to be subject to public scrutiny.

The bill on data and information protection would also see the government create an independent agency to oversee, audit and monitor the exchange of personal data.

Such an agency might have unrestricted access to personal data and act to resolve disputes on data misuse.

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