I WAS shocked in June when a pollster somehow got hold of my number from an unknown source which mentioned details only registered with my telco. Since then, I’ve been wondering about how secure our data is in the hands of retailers, marketers and service providers.

And then the faeces hit the fan.

If you haven’t heard, Deputy Prime Minister, Home Minister and Umno Deputy President Datuk Seri Zahid Hamidi decided it was okay to have a show-and-tell about Tun Mahathir Mohamed’s national identity card, to show that he was not a proper Malaysian with links to India.

Honestly, one would think Zahid – with his Indonesian ancestry while working for someone taking pride as a “Bugis Warrior” – would have an inkling of inhibition when calling out someone’s heritage.

It was a bad move. On one hand you talk about giving Malaysian Indian Muslims Bumiputera status, on the other you decide that it was somehow plausible to call out a Malay with Indian heritage as “not Malay enough”?

Sounds rather schizophrenic to me.

Yet, more worrying is that the government through ministers can just come out and give a show and tell regarding ICs just because they are campaigning for a soon-to-be-called general election.

It came as a surprise to me that the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) 2010 has a non-application section. As it reads in Section 3, state and federal governments are exempt from this law.

Similarly, our Federal Constitution guarantees privacy, but somehow puts laws as caveats.

And thus, Zahid as Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister is legally allowed to do what he did. And he did it more for his Umno politicking rather than to maintain national security.

I cannot help but wonder if opposition-run states like Selangor and Penang can both do what Zahid did, since both federal and state governments are exempt from the PDPA. I would think so.

But I do hope both Azmin Ali and Lim Guan Eng make better judgements, seeing as how people are now more picky about their data privacy, and would like government to guarantee its security.

I can’t speak so much about the rural mindset, but I do believe urbanites would like to ensure their right to data privacy is kept at a higher priority when they get scammers calling and texting their mobile phones, pretending to be pollsters and even banks.

Malaysians need to think long and hard on this one because it speaks about a bigger issue. What the government did to Mahathir, they can do to you.

Would you like everyone knowing your IC number, which can then be used to get your records on taxes, home ownership, business dealings, your EPF account number, insurance, bank account details even? Heck, they could even trace it back to your thesis and PTPTN loan figures.

And for those more concerned with politics rather than everything else, you could suddenly be registered as a voter even without your knowledge.

I don’t have a problem with having my IC number shown out if I’m suddenly a wanted criminal, or a bankrupt, or perhaps even if I’m suddenly culpable to pay a MARA loan for some odd reason. But not for a political smear campaign.

Politics should be heading towards a discussion about issues at hand – cost of living, affordable housing, unemployment, even the issue of government microcredit loans being wiped off the records.

Sadly, we do not see politics as a place for such discussions and prefer mudslinging to such an end that every single ethical thought goes out the window. – August 4, 2017.

* Hafidz loves to ruffle feathers and believes in the EA Games tag line of challenging everything. Most times, he represents the Devil’s Advocate on multiple issues.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.