Privacy for Ah Kong, Privacy for Ah Kow

I must confess to being both bemused and concerned about the opacity regarding how GIC / Temasek spending investing a lot of our money.

On the one hand, I would also go tell the Westerners to go fly kite; wah lao, give you money to save your banks from their reckless greed and lousy regulation oso want to comprain so much. A lack of transparency is also needed to protect commercial secrets - I'm all for it if it's my money (in a distant sort of way) on the line.

On the other hand, I heartily agree with Wayne that there needs to be domestic accountability. Because it's my money (in a distant sort of way) on the line.

Dun need tell the ang moh, but at least got to tell us lah! But how to have scrutiny without spilling the beans? Would some kind of closed door parliamentary sub-committee, incorporating at least expert NMPs and one opposition MP, manage to strike an appropriate balance between accountability and maintaining information advantage over foreigners who do not necessarily have our interests at heart?

And since our leaders understand the importance of privacy to Ah Kong Companies (GIC/Temasek), I hope that they will also understand why us Tan Ah Kows also value our privacy and that there will be speedier progress on legislating a Data Protection Act.

There are already stringent provisions that for the protection of Tuah Ling Kong Companies. The prosecution of seven ex-Citibankers for allegedly transferring client information from Citibank to UBS promises to be a landmark case; it is the first time a corporate case is being heard under the Computer Misuse Act and Section 47 (Banking Secrecy) of the Banking Act.

However there has been little progress on a Data Protection Act for the woman and man on the street. Privacy International dryly notes that 'The idea of data protection legislation has been officially "under review" by the government for 13 years.' And counting. There was an AGC report (PDF) about it in 2002 but I have no information about any follow-up (can someone enlighten me please?).

NMP Siew Kum Hong asked about it in Feb last year and the answer (Hansard) was something along the lines of: All our operators are busy. Please hold the line. *elevator music*

It is true that data protection laws will increase business and gahmen costs of compliance but it will also be beneficial for the consumer. There will be a legal framework to set clear standards across the board and recourse / sanctions against those who breach them. Because gahmen agencies (currently only IRAS has a strong statutory protection) and private businesses will be accountable for the information they have on us, it will encourage them to collect the minimum required to do what's needed (less form filling, yay!) and to better protect what they do collect (password, encryption, anonymization of data, negative databases etc.).

There are various models available for study, such as the UK Data Protection Act 1998 which is not all that strong actually - see its long list of exemptions but at least can cut and paste of the basic principles. (Any readers got suggestions for a better model?)

Besides the domestic benefits for you and me, there could also be international implications for our economic competitiveness. For example, the European Union prohibits the transfer of personal data to jurisdictions whose data protection laws are not commensurate with its own. Even the US nearly kena regarding EU airline passenger data but due to national security considerations and America's negotiating clout, that dispute has since been settled.

Our sovereign wealth funds and locally registered banks are clearly enjoying the benefits of protecting their data. It's time for individual citizen-consumers to have the same rights.

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