Phl joins cross-border privacy enforcement arrangement

The Philippines has strengthened its reach for cross-border privacy cooperation following the National Privacy Commission (NPC)’s confirmation as a Privacy Enforcement Authority (PEA) for the country.

The country has joined the APEC Cross Border Privacy Enforcement Arrangement (CPEA), with NPC becoming the 11th PEA along with those from eight other APEC economies, namely Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Republic of Korea, New Zealand, US and Mexico.

“Definitely our entry opens new doors and possibilities. What we can guarantee as part of the CPEA, more doors will open to us,” NPC commissioner and chairman Raymund Liboro said.

As a next step, Liboro said the NPC is convening local stakeholders to build consensus around formally joining the APEC Cross-Border Privacy Rules (CBPR).

The APEC CBPR system is a regional, multilateral crossborder data transfer mechanism and enforceable privacy code of conduct developed for businesses by the 21 APEC member economies.

To date, five APEC economies are already part of the CBPRs: South Korea, Canada, Japan, Mexico and the US.

“The CBPR System enables Philippine-based companies to get their data-privacy and protection systems certified with a local accountability agent. This would allow them to freely transfer data to all CBPR-participating countries. For businesses, this would mean less hassle as certification would amount to meeting the privacy requirements of each member-country in the system,” Liboro said.

The NPC is currently undertaking its investigation of the data breach involving transport hailing mobile application Uber with the assistance of the Federal Trade Commission of the US.

“We’re still in the information gathering stage. We are drafting a compliance order to the Uber management wherein we will outline now what other information we will be needing. But we’re giving them a little leeway because generally, these processes take time,” Liboro said.