Topic: Data Protection Bill

The final meeting of the 2013-2017 Legislative Assembly may ultimately be remembered for its failure to approve regulatory changes to the Cayman Islands legal profession, but lawmakers approved more than three dozen new laws or changes to existing legislation.

The potential for legal liability and human rights violations apparently forced the Cayman Islands government’s hand on the approval of a Data Protection Bill in the waning hours of its last Legislative Assembly meeting.

Another oft-debated and much-maligned proposal – the Data Protection Bill – suddenly appeared before Cayman Islands lawmakers Wednesday, in the midst of their ongoing debate over the controversial Legal Practitioners Bill. The data legislation was put before the Legislative Assembly last April and later withdrawn.

The Confidential Relationships (Preservation) Law – which Cayman’s attorney general once referred to as “the bane of our existence since the 1970s” – will be replaced by rewritten legislation as early as this summer.

Cayman Islands lawmakers will try for a fourth time to enact data protection legislation – aimed at protecting the privacy of personal information – with an amendment bill scheduled to be brought before parliament in September.