KUALA LUMPUR, July 30 — Communications Minister Datuk Fahmi Fadzil has questioned the apparent double standards among critics of the government's mobile data-sharing policy.
He was responding to the strong backlash following the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) directive in June, which required telecommunications companies to provide data on all mobile phone calls made from January to March.
Fahmi, who is also the Madani government spokesperson, said the MCMC’s request was intended to assist the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM) in data collection. However, the policy has drawn heavy criticism from parties concerned about privacy and data security.
He cited the recent case where tech giant Google was fined US$314 million (RM1.33 billion) for allegedly harvesting data from 14 million smartphone users in California, the United States, without their consent.
“Yet, we rarely raise concerns about the kind of data we freely give away every day to social media platforms, search engines, artificial intelligence and large language models,” Fahmi said in his speech during the launch of the International Connectivity Conference and Expo 2025 today.
On June 8, the minister said the MCMC's request for mobile phone call data from telecommunications companies is aimed at supporting evidence-based policymaking, including enhancing network infrastructure.
He said the requested data does not include identities or any information that could be used to identify individuals.
Fahmi explained that the purpose of collecting the data was to support the official statistics compiled by the DOSM, focusing on trends to gather detailed information about network quality, user engagement levels, and the number of users in sub-districts or districts.
— Bernama
