jenniferdebeer

data protection cont´d (+ an aside)

A favorite pic of Cape Town: http://www.fotopaises.com/foto/Sudafrica/Cape_Town/6356.htm
Nice vista of the whole peninsula, with the Atlantic Ocean in the foreground, and the Indian Ocean in the background.
-----------

Thinking further on data protection legislation in South Africa analogous to the Spanish example, and our lack of extensive such legislation. I had some notions around the latter relating to the number of persons in South Africa who are online, or supposedly make use of the official/formal banking infrastructure (about 4 million of the population of approx. 45 million), which now seem far off the mark and not worth elaborating :)

Herewith an excerpt from bridges.org´s response to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee re the then (2002) ECT Bill, and in particular regarding data protection:

Source http://www.bridges.org/e-policy/sa/ect/

Chapter VIII: Protection of Personal Information

We commend the provisions set out in this Chapter aimed at protecting personal information. However, subscription to the principle should be mandatory, not voluntary, and there may be a need to include additional principles at a later date. Provision should be made for this in the legislation, especially in view of the fact that the Law Commission is currently developing specific data protection/privacy legislation and this is expected to be enacted within 24 months. We believe that this legislation should also be fast-tracked so that it can keep pace with the provisions of this Bill. We also suggest that Section 52(3) be amended to state that data controllers must not only disclose the purpose for which any personal information is being "requested…or stored", but must also provide the information itself to the data subject if requested to do so in writing.

-----
Worth looking at is the South African Law Reform Commission´s issue papers (http://www.law.wits.ac.za/salc/issue/issue.html), number 124 in particular deals with data protection. I link here to the Summary of Proposals and Questionnaire: http://www.law.wits.ac.za/salc/issue/ip24-sum-ques.pdf
Note that the date for comments is late-2003.

I see no related draft legislation online, not here http://www.polity.org.za/pol/draftbill/, neither here http://www.polity.org.za/pol/bill/

posted by Jennifer A. DeBeer @ 16:02