Lower House approves personal data protection bill after Senate amendments

AMMAN — The Lower House on Wednesday approved the amended 2022 personal data protection bill as amended by the Senate.

Amendments allow institutions, which are subject to the supervision of the Central Bank of Jordan, to legally process personal data, including the transfer and exchange of data inside or outside the Kingdom, without informing the person whose data is processed.

The amendments also exempt these institutions from acquiring licenses to do so, provided that they do not disclose the data to other parties.

This action has been bestowed with the dual status of being both "legal" and "legitimate" under the reformed law, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

As per the bill, the term "process" includes data gathering, recording, storing, organising, editing, using, sending, displaying, hiding, coding, disposal, erasing, amending, describing or disclosing the data by any means.

The Senate also added an item requiring the issuance of a special bylaw for regulating the processing of data, and removed the term "accessing data" from the definition of "process" mentioned in the draft law.

The amendments also granted the Cabinet, rather than the Minister of Digital Economy and Entrepreneurship, the authority to appoint four experts to the personal data protection council that would be established under the bill.

The bill was approved during a Lower House session chaired by Lower House Speaker Ahmad Safadi and attended by Cabinet members.