Data Privacy

Top officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) told a House committee hearing on Wednesday, Feb. 2, that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has already ruled out any breach of its servers, contrary to a report of the Manila Bulletin.

However, most of those with Internet access still lack awareness on Internet security, with only 9% awareness of appropriate social media usage.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said the digitalization of the civil registry system through tablet-based mode data collection has resulted in a 100-percent accuracy of data collection and timely release of survey results as it eliminated the manual data encoding.

Agusan del Norte representative Lawrence Fortun said in a statement that the Manila Bulletin report was apparently erroneous as “[i]t appears now the alleged hacked files do not exist.”

In 2019, the NPC found that Pieceland Corp. processed the personal data of Manila New Life Church Inc. members without the consent of data subjects.

In filing Senate Resolution No. 961, re-electionist senator Sherwin Gatchalian sought to direct the appropriate committee to conduct an inquiry, in aid of legislation, with the end goal of strengthening the legal framework to enhance the enforcement of Data Privacy Act, Cybercrime Prevention Act, New Central Bank Act, and other related laws.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has also reminded banks and e-wallet providers to enhance their surveillance and monitoring measures to deter digital vote-buying and selling schemes in relation to the upcoming elections in May 2022.

New privacy commissioner John Henry Naga said the National Privacy Commission (NPC) is investigating whether BDO’s aging IT system had sufficient technical, organizational, and physical safeguards in place to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of personal information.

National Privacy Commission (NPC) deputy commissioner John Henry Naga has been appointed as the new chair of the data privacy agency while Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) undersecretary Emmanuel “Manny” Caintic has been designated as the acting secretary at the ICT agency, a highly-placed source told Newsbytes.PH.

The National Privacy Commission said the mandatory SIM card registration will only succeed under a framework of guaranteed privacy protection for mobile users.