Description

Thirty years after the adoption of the first international instrument on the protection of personal data by the OECD, the policy/law makers in Asia realised the importance of having comprehensive legislation to protect personal data of individuals. Many countries in the region have enacted new laws or amending the existing ones. The Taiwanese Parliament passed a law called the Personal Data Protection Act in 2010. Korea followed suit and enacted a new Personal Information Protection Act a year later. Malaysia was the first among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in having it in 2010, followed later by Singapore and the Philippines. Recently, Taiwan, Japan and Korea amended their laws, while Singapore and New Zealand are working on theirs. India and Indonesia are both working on a comprehensive law. In the meantime, ASEAN has adopted a Framework on Personal Data Protection to strengthen the protection of personal data and facilitate the cooperation among member countries. The EU GDPR and its extraterritorial applications may have some influences on the development in Asia. This talk seeks to provide a comparative analysis of the data protection legislation in some selected Asian countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan etc. This session will ascertain and deliberate on some of the main similarities and differences in the regulation. In concluding, it will briefly discuss some recent developments taking place in the region.

About The Speaker

Professor Abu Bakar Munir is an internationally renowned scholar, expert and consultant on the ICT law and data protection law. He is a Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, Malaysia and an Associate Fellow of the University of Malaya Malaysian Centre for Regulatory Studies (UMCoRS). He is also the Legal Adviser and Data Protection Consultant to the Straits Interactive Pte. Ltd., Singapore, Senior Adviser to the Schinder Law Firm, Jakarta, a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Asia Pacific Institute for Digital Economy, (APIDE) Tokyo, and a member of the Asian Privacy Scholars Network (APSN), Australia. He is one of the founding members of the recently established Bali International Arbitration and Mediation Center. He speaks extensively at seminars, conferences and workshops around the world and has published numerous articles and books in the area of ICT law and data protection law.