Personal data protection bill on the anvil — Gharaibeh

AMMAN — While Jordan witnesses rapid technological changes and a growing use of smart devices, Minister of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship Muthana Gharaibeh on Monday said that the final draft of the law on the protection of personal data will be referred to the Cabinet this November.

“The amount of personal data that exists online has increased a lot and in all sectors, especially the banking and communications sectors,” the minister told The Jordan Times.

The data now include “not merely a name and a mobile phone number, or even just a picture, they now include iris recognition, fingerprints, health details, locations and even transport routes", the minister added.

As it is easy to collect and analyse these data, there has to be a legal framework to protect personal information, preventing the violation of people's right to privacy, having the necessary protection to move their data across various sectors and completing online transactions safely, according to the minister.

Partners from the public and private sectors helped conduct various tours to finish the final and fifth draft of the law, the minister said, noting that the next step is to discuss the law internally mid-September in order to refer it to the Cabinet and continue the process to endorse the law.

The minister said that the legal framework of the law will bind institutions to commit to processing, analysing and storing data according to certain limitations that boost the trust needed to be more involved in digital economy and encourage e-commerce and online services, especially in light of the age of concepts such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Therefore, the law will allow each individual to exercise their right to protect their personal information, which is to be distributed only with their consent, allowing no violations or illegal leakage of the information whatsoever.