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Insight: Balancing progress and privacy: The PDP Law in the age of innovation
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T
here is no better time to give individuals greater control over personal data protection. With the rise of data-heavy digital technologies, privacy intrusion, including personal data, is one of the risks that we unfortunately face today.
Interestingly, awareness of data protection and privacy has increased with the growth of data-heavy digital technologies.
According to a Pew Research survey in 2023, four in 10 Americans said they were apprehensive about companies selling their information to others without their knowledge or people stealing their identity or personal information. Regarding artificial intelligence (AI), 70 percent of respondents said they had little to no trust in companies to make responsible decisions about how to use AI in their products.
It can be gleaned from the above that personal data plays an essential role in digital technology. It is thus even more critical that individuals know what their data is being used for and how they are processed.
Unfortunately, there is an apparent need to uncover how digital service providers process personal data, which is often opaque due to unclear information or insufficient user knowledge on how their data are processed.
For readers’ information, knowledge of data protection and privacy is essential, and this might even be considered fundamental if an individual goes online. Unfortunately, Indonesia’s digital literacy index, or the level of digital knowledge including data privacy among the general public, stands at 3.65 out of 5 at the intermediate level (Katadata, 2023).
This situation indicates a big job for us all. With the issuance of Law No. 27/2022 on personal data protection (the PDP Law), the government is trying to provide better protection for individuals’ personal data.
