Open AccessDigital Tracing and Malaysia's Personal Data Protection Act 2010 amid the Covid-19 Pandemic
Author(s) -
Olivia Tan Swee Leng,
Rossanne Gale Vergara,
Shereen Khan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
asian journal of law and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2785-8979
DOI - 10.33093/ajlp.2021.3
Subject(s) - contact tracing , tracing , data protection act 1998 , pandemic , legislation , government (linguistics) , trace (psycholinguistics) , covid-19 , internet privacy , computer security , business , computer science , data collection , political science , law , sociology , medicine , social science , linguistics , philosophy , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , operating system
Digital tracing is a proven effective means for the Malaysian government to trace and control the spread of COVID-19. However, the process of tracing and tracking in order to manage the spread of the pandemic have in many ways compromised personal information to third party applications. Malaysia is not the only country that uses digital tracing to manage the spread of the pandemic. Various countries have chosen different methods for digital contact tracing to manage the spread of COVID-19 and some are less respectful of privacy than others. This paper analyses Malaysia’s Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (PDPA) and its effectiveness in protecting personal data during the pandemic as Malaysians continue to utilise the contact tracing mobile applications such as MySejahtera and SELangkah. The researchers applied doctrinal research method and analysed the current Malaysian legislation on data protection. It should be noted that the PDPA does not apply in the case of government collection and would not require federal and state agencies to be transparent in their data management.