Personal Data Protection Bill passed by Malaysia Parliament Where It Is, Where It’s Going It is official now, that the long-awaited personal data protection (PDP) Bill had been passed by the Malaysian House of Representative (Dewan Rakyat) in June 2010.Generally, the enactment of the PDP is laudable. Prior to this, Malaysia adopted the sectoral approach in protecting personal data .
The PDP will apply to anyone who processes or who has control over or authorises the processing of any personal data in respect of commercial transactions. The person who processes any personal data is called data user and the person whose personal data is being processed is known as data subject.
The PDP imposes many obligations on the data user. It requires that the data user comply with the seven PDP principles, failing which he can be fined not exceeding RM300,000 or be jailed for a term not exceeding two years, or both. Buying and selling of personal data is a criminal offence. Besides, any individual who feels annoyed with direct marketing will be able to prevent this from happening.
