Taiwan is to have enhanced protection for personal medical records and private data after receiving approval to join the Global Cooperation Arrangement for Privacy Enforcement (Global CAPE), according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
Global CAPE includes the US, Japan, Canada, the UK, South Korea, Philippines, Singapore, Mexico, Dubai International Financial Centre of UAE, and Bermuda, with Taiwan being the latest member, said Shen Chun-han (沈君翰) of the ministry’s Department of Information Management earlier this week.
“We expect to work with these foreign partners to cooperate on cross-border enforcement and to boost protection of individuals’ personal data,” Shen said after being notified of the approval.
The trend of digitalization has accelerated worldwide, with surging demand for cross-border transmission of data files, resulting in theft and infringement of personal information which often involves foreign jurisdictions, therefore international cooperation through this body is needed to combat such illegal activities, and to prevent the situation from worsening, Shen said.
The Global CAPE was established in October last year by members of the Global Cross-Border Privacy Rules Forum to invite other major national law enforcement authorities to promote mutual legal assistance and international cooperation on data protection and privacy laws,” he added.
Shen cited the case of entertainer Mickey Huang (黃子佼), who was indicted last week on charges of sexual exploitation of minors for buying sexual abuse videos of underage teenagers from illegal online forum “Chuangyi Sifang” (創意私房), leading to concerns on how to protect the privacy of minors and how businesses can recover stolen data.
“In the future, we can go through cross-border cooperation for law enforcement under Global CAPE, to protect the privacy rights of citizens... However, currently we do not have a government agency that can take overall responsibility for personal data protection, although one preparation office is getting started, which would likely would be the main liaison window with Global CAPE,” Shen said.
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