Cebu City Business Sector Focuses on Data Privacy with NPC Talk

In the induction of new members of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI), the Deputy Privacy Commissioner of the National Privacy Commission, Atty. Leonardo Aguirre was the keynote speaker and talked about the Data Privacy Act of 2012.

Aguirre in his keynote speech said that not long ago privacy was limited to a place and what you share to other people.

He also talked about how privacy evolve and how you can choose to keep private whatever information that has made public through our social media accounts, pubic domains or even related to work.

“The idea of privacy has evolve, the idea of privacy now is not restricted to a particular place but it’s the idea that the person can choose to keep as private, even something that have already been exposed to the public,” Aguirre said in his keynote speech.

The misconceptions of Data Privacy and Data Protection was also mentioned in his speech. He said that Data Privacy and Data Protection are not exactly the same but they go hand in hand.

“You can’t have Data Privacy unless you’re able to protect the information that you process,” Aguirre said.

He also stressed about the privacy of personal data and information and how is the data being used by companies and other agencies.

“So think of data privacy as governing the authorized, it’s about keeping people that are unauthorized out. It’s about making sure that the authorized people within your company process that information, properly in an accountable manner so that you are able to give assurance to the data subjects, your customers,” Aguirre said.

He also talked about the effects of the misuse of private data and how it affects the person.

“…it can result in discrimination against them. There maybe a stigma attached to that… think also of other types of personal information that can go out to the public and probably it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that some of these things may actually happened if that type of information gets out,” Aguirre said.

The Data Privacy Act of 2012 regulates companies on how they they use your private information and make sure that these companies communicate with their customers and make sure that their personal information is being processed correctly.

In 2012, The Philippine Congress passed the Republic Act No. 10173 also known as Data Privacy Act of 2012 . The data Privacy Act’s Implementing Rules and Regulations was then implemented on September 2016. (Aljun S. Cainghog)