SINGAPORE: A former Progress Singapore Party (PSP) member who left in July last year, Martin Piper, sued the Singapore Kindness Movement (SKM), claiming the charity organisation exposed his personal information to someone he had previously complained about.
According to Channel News Asia, the civil suit, which opened at the State Courts on Monday, Aug 5, centres around allegations that SKM breached the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (PDPA) by revealing Mr Piper’s name and email address to Ms Carol Loi Pui Wan.
Ms Loi co-founded the SGFamilies ground-up movement, an affiliate of SKM.
Mr Piper, 51 and unemployed, argued that SKM violated his privacy rights by disclosing his details without consent. He had initially lodged a complaint with SKM about Ms Loi’s alleged discriminatory behaviour in a Telegram chat group on Aug 27, 2022.
His statement of claim stated, “To (Mr Piper’s) knowledge, (Ms Loi) was engaging in discriminatory conduct by operating a chat group on Telegram Messenger which disseminated transphobic and anti-LGBT material.”
The situation escalated when Ms Loi filed a harassment claim against Mr Piper under the Protection From Harassment Act 2014 (POHA) on Sept 5, 2022. Although Ms Loi withdrew her claim, Mr Piper’s harassment case was settled out of court last month.
In his opening statement, Mr Piper claimed that he received death threats, which referred to Ms Loi. Documents submitted by his lawyers, Fong Wei Li and Tiffanie Lim from Forward Legal, stated that their client experienced “financial loss and emotional distress.”
In response, SKM’s lawyers, Senior Counsel Gregory Vijayendran and Meher Malhotra from Rajah & Tann, have described the charity as an “innocent middleman” caught in a crossfire between the two.
They argued that SKM’s efforts to mediate between Mr Piper and Ms Loi were rebuffed and resulted in the charity being entangled in the dispute when they were only performing “an act of kindness.”
The charity’s defence argued that Mr Piper implicitly consented to collecting, using, and disclosing his personal data because he provided it voluntarily for the investigation.
During his testimony on Monday, Mr Piper was questioned about whether he had explicitly requested anonymity. The defence argued that it was reasonable for the Singapore Kindness Movement to share his details with Ms Loi.
Mr Piper disagreed, stating that while it was reasonable for SKM to use his contact information to reach him, it was unacceptable for them to disclose his details to Ms Loi.
Mr Vijayendran told Mr Piper: “I’m going to put it to you because you voluntarily agreed to provide your personal data to Singapore Kindness Movement for the investigation; you had impliedly consented to the disclosure of your personal data for their investigation.”
Mr Piper disagreed, drawing on his experience as a former senior manager at Standard Chartered Bank. He explained that, although he was expected to respond to complaints, he was not supposed to reveal the names of complainants to those being complained about.
He noted that “this is normal confidentiality procedure.”
Mr Vijayendran argued that whistleblowing usually involves reporting issues within an organisation’s staff or management. He said this case didn’t fit that description because Ms Loi was neither employed by nor in management at the Singapore Kindness Movement.
Mr Piper disagreed with this argument.
The trial will continue on Monday and is expected to wrap up by Tuesday. /TISG
Featured image by Depositphotos