Law on Data protection and privacy in offing-gov’t

KAMPALA: The government has said propositions for a law protecting data have been approved and ICT minister, John Nasasira, has been sanctioned to issue drafting instructions to the first parliamentary counsel to draft the Data Protection and Privacy Bill 2014.

Briefing journalists yesterday, the Information minister Rosemary Namayanja, said, Cabinet Wednesday approved principles for the bill, to safe guard interests of individuals whose information or data is collected by government, public institutions and private entities.

“There has been no law to safeguard the data collected or to ensure that it is used only for purposes for which it was intended,” she said, “In many cases the data collected is of a personal nature which may easily be misused in the absence of the legal framework to govern and integrity and circumstances relating to the use, storage and processing of data.”

The mooted law comes handy when personal data belonging to over 1 million customers is in the hands of foreign telecommunications companies, with whom they were mandated to register during the bungled Sim Card registration exercise.

Critics, who subsequently dragged the communications regulator, UCC, to Court to delay the switching off of unregistered simcard holders, had argued that the lack of data protection law in the country was a hazard to privacy and freedom of speech.

Section 3 of the 2010 Regulation of Interception of Communications Act, which permitted Sim Card registration, hints on the establishment of a data monitoring center by the ICT minister, which shall store customer’s information, but does not guarantee safety of the information.

This according to Ms Cathy Anite, a legal expert was a violation of article 27 of the Constitution which guarantees right to privacy of a person, and other property

But Ms Namayanja argued the Bill is to give effect to article 27 by providing for protection of private and personal data.

“It will ensure that the rights of individuals during data collection and processing are upheld against the threats and attacks capable of compromising the rights of information,” she maintained.

Side bar

A report by Unwanted Witness released early this week accused government of investing heavily in monitoring devices to listen in, track and follow private conversation of both computers and hand held devices, and appealed for a law on privacy.