KUALA LUMPUR, July 30 — Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil again defended the government’s mandatory mobile phone data collection programme today, dismissing claims that the move infringes on personal privacy and arguing that it is a “sovereign act.”
Speaking at the International Connectivity Conference and Expo here, the minister suggested critics were being disingenuous by focusing on the government’s programme while ignoring cases of actual data theft by large corporations.
“Being in control of hardware, it’s a sovereign act. I know some of you made hue and cry about the MCMC rule, which is the MPD programme to identify trends without encroaching on personal identifiable information of people,” he said.
He then cited search giant Google being fined US$314 million in California for allegedly stealing data from the phones of 14 million users.
“Yet we make no noise about the data that we give out for free, every single day,” Fahmi said.
His comments came after he told the Dewan Rakyat earlier today that the Mobile Population Data (MPD) collection programme would not be scrapped because no privacy violation has occurred, despite mounting calls for its cessation.
The minister and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) have faced criticism since the MPD programme was reported, with detractors raising concerns about potential privacy breaches.
The MCMC previously clarified that the data collected from mobile network operators (MNOs) is used strictly for generating official statistics to support evidence-based policymaking in two key areas: the information and communications technology (ICT) sector and the tourism sector.
For the ICT sector, the commission said MPD helps produce granular statistics, such as active mobile broadband subscriptions and penetration rates at state, district, and constituency levels.
For tourism, it generates indicators like the number of visitors and domestic tourism trips.
The MCMC has assured the public that no personally identifiable information (PII) is accessed, processed, or disclosed in this programme.
