Singapore Unit 2A Legislative History II Flashcards
What are the areas in Singapore which is considered to be forms of surveillance and identification?
National Registration Identity Card (NRIC): Used for government services, staying in hotels, opening bank accounts, commonly required by private sector to enter their premises
Singpass: Single sign-on system used to access e-government services; only recently implemented two-factor authentication
National online system for holding all patient records from (ex-government) hospitals and clinics in Singapore
Electronic Road Pricing (ERP): for regulating traffic congestion (with differentiated charging by zone and time)
CCTV deployed at public places for security purposes.
What are the constitutional protection of privacy for Singapore? What are the provisions for individual liberties with regards to privacy? (Human rights?)
Singapore has little legal protection of privacy outside the PDPA. There is no strong legal context of protection for human rights.
- No explicit constitutional protection of privacy. Article 9(1) of the Singapore constitution relates to liberty of the person
- Not a party to any enforceable international agreements protecting privacy
- No tort of invasion of privacy; some protection provided by breach of confidence law
- However, Singapore has one of the highest reputations of any country for lack of corruption in public sector and for the operation of the rule of law
Singapore has a number of provisions for individual liberties (but none refers specifically to privacy or personal information)
- Singapore has not signed the ICCPR – International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed by 17 other Asian countries)
- Singapore is a member of ASEAN and has adopted the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration
What are the common law protection for data protection for Singapore?
Law of confidence is the primary method for addressing misuses of private confidential information in many Commonwealth jurisdictions, though this tends to be linked to publication of that information
Singapore took lead to develop a Tort of Harassment — “a course of conduct by a person, whether by words or action, directly or through third parties, sufficiently repetitive in nature as would cause, and which he ought reasonably to know, would cause worry, emotional distress or annoyance to another person”
Singapore enacted the Protection from Harassment Act 2014
- Covers stalking and online sexual harassment and bullying both online and offline
- Abolished the previously-developed tort of harassment
Amended in May 2019 to add ‘doxxing’, which involves the publication of identity information in order to harass, threaten or facilitate violence against a victim.
In December 2020, a Law Reform Committee of the Singapore Academy of Law recommended a statutory tort of misuse of private information - victims would be able to bring a civil action against a perpetrator who intentionally misused the victim’s private information without their consent.
What are some sector specific protections for data protection in Singapore?
Before the PDPA, there were numerous statutes which include secrecy and disclosure provisions that affected the processing of confidential or personal data
National Internet Advisory Committee (NIAC) in a 2002 report listed 161 such laws
Laws Governing Data held by the Government:
- Official Secrets Act
- Statistics Act
- Statutory Bodies and Government Companies (Protection of Secrecy) Act
- Central Provident Fund Act
- Electronic Transactions Act
Statutes regulating data held by private sector entities:
- Banking Act
- Telecommunications Act
- Computer Misuse Act
