MPD Initiative Involves Only Aggregated Statistics, No Personal Data - Teo

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 18 (Bernama) -- Mobile network operators (MNOs) only submit aggregated statistical outputs to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) under the Mobile Phone Data (MPD) initiative, said Deputy Communications Minister Teo Nie Ching.

She said all raw data remains entirely within the telecommunications companies’ own systems.

“For example, the data would show ‘the number of mobile broadband subscriptions in the Bangi parliamentary constituency or in the Semenyih state constituency’, and not the location or identity of any individual user.

“For the tourism sector, the MPD initiative is used only to produce statistics such as the number of visitors and the number of domestic tourism trips,” she said during the Special Chamber session in the Dewan Rakyat today.

Teo was replying to a question from Syahredzan Johan (PH-Bangi) on the implementation of mobile phone data collection and users’ privacy rights.

The Deputy Minister stressed that the MPD initiative is not a surveillance system and does not involve any collection or transfer of users’ raw data.

She said MPD also does not involve any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and therefore does not fall under the definition of “personal data” in Section 4 of the Personal Data Protection Act 2010.

Elaborating, Teo said that at the early stage of MPD implementation, MNOs were given two options. Under Option A, they could process the data within their own secure environment and submit only aggregated statistical outputs to MCMC.

Under Option B, MNOs without internal processing capabilities were allowed to submit de-identified data to MCMC, which would then be processed into aggregated statistical outputs.

Teo said that by the end of the first quarter of this year, all MNOs had fully migrated to Option A, and therefore, no de-identified data is collected anymore under the MPD initiative.

-- BERNAMA