Protection Of Personal Information Bill, No. 2

This is the second of three articles dealing with the Protection of Personal Information Bill (POPI).  In the first article I discussed the fact that POPI regulates the processing of much of the personal information that's processed in South Africa, and I made brief mention of the various ways in which it does that.   In this article I'll look at POPI's most important mechanism, the eight Information Protection Principles (the Principles) that all companies and public bodies that process personal information (Responsible Parties) need to observe.

If you are a Responsible Party (and I'd like to think that every reader of this article is) you need to understand the following principles. It's also worth noting that, as onerous as some of the Principles may seem, the exceptions often create a fair degree of wiggle room: