The Cabinet yesterday proposed revisions to four articles of the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) and decided that the legislation would take effect in two stages.
Approved by the legislature in April 2010, the act was promulgated by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九). However, it has yet to take effect because of controversies surrounding the four articles.
The Ministry of Justice, as regulatory agency of the act, was censured by the Control Yuan for failing to enforce the legislation.
Premier Sean Chen (陳冲) yesterday decided that the act should take effect on Oct. 1, and he instructed the ministry to communicate with lawmakers to push for passage of the four revised articles.
Under the revised Article 6, personal information in health records was listed as a type of information that may not be collected, used or processed, in addition to personal information of medical treatment, genetic information, sexuality, health examinations and criminal records, which were already listed in the article of the 2010 Act.
Exceptions to the limits were made for six situations, two of which were newly added to the article — when the reason was to safeguard public interests and when written consent of concerned parties was obtained.
The revised Article 54 suggested removal the requirement that financial institutions inform individuals about their personal information not provided by the concerned party within one year after the effective date of the act.
It stipulated instead that financial institutions inform individuals of the data they posess before they use or process the information.
The Cabinet revised Article 41 of the act by removing criminal penalty for violations of certain articles of the when the irregularities were not conducted for the purpose of profit.
The original article stipulated that violators should face a prison sentence of no more than two years, or a fine of no more than NT$200,000 or both.
Meanwhile, the National Communications Commission (NCC) on Wednesday issued an order banning telecoms carriers from transmitting their customers’ personal information to China.
Those who failed to follow the order will face a fine of between NT$20,000 and NT$100,000 per violation and will be asked to address the issue within a designated period, the commission said.
The order was issued after a report last year that some of the telecoms carriers had outsourced their customer service operations to China, commission spokesperson Wei Shyue-win (魏學文) said.
Wu Ming-ren (吳銘仁), a specialist at the commission, said the commission had received reports alleging that some telecoms carriers have customer service centers in China, but its investigation showed that none of the telecom carriers had done so.
Wei said the restrictive order was issued based on Article 21 of the Personal Data Protection Act, in which the government authority may restrict a non-government agency from transmitting personal information internationally if it involves major national interests or other conditions.
Separately, the commission also approved principles governing the reporting of gender-related content in the broadcast media, which bans the broadcast media from insinuating or speculating about the identities of victims of sexual harassment or those who were forced to take indecent photographs.
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