As regards the first of those two categories, it is explained in Article 4 of the Cabinet Order and covers four types of exemptions (20). These exemptions pursue similar objectives as those listed in Article 23(1) of Regulation (EU) 2016/679, notably protection of the data subject ("principal" in the terminology of the APPI) and the freedom of others, national security, public security, criminal law enforcement or other important objectives of general public interest. In addition, it results from the wording of Article 4(1)(i)-(iv) of the Cabinet Order that their application always presupposes a specific risk for one of the protected important interests (21).

The second category has been further specified in Article 5 of the Cabinet Order. Read in conjunction with Article 2(7) of the APPI, it exempts from the scope of the notion of retained personal data, and thus from the individual rights under the APPI, those personal data that are "set to be deleted" within a period of six months. The PPC has explained that this exemption aims at incentivising business operators to retain and process data for the shortest period possible. However, this would mean that EU data subjects would not be able to benefit from important rights for no other reason than the duration of the retention of their data by the concerned business operator.

Article 76 of the APPI excludes certain types of data processing from the application of Chapter IV of the Act, which contains the central data protection provisions (basic principles, obligations of business operators, individual rights, supervision by the PPC). Processing covered by the sectoral exclusion in Article 76 is also exempted from the enforcement powers of the PPC, pursuant to Article 43(2) of the APPI (24).

The scope of application of the APPI is determined by the defined concepts of Personal Information, Personal Data and Personal Information Handling Business Operator. At the same time, the APPI provides for some important exemptions from its scope, most importantly for Anonymously Processed Personal Data and for specific types of processing by certain operators. While the APPI does not use the term "processing", it relies on the equivalent concept of "handling" which, according to the information received from the PPC, covers "any act on personal data" including the acquisition, input, accumulation, organisation, storage, editing/processing, renewal, erasure, output, utilization, or provision of personal information.

As under the Supplementary Rules personal data transferred from the European Union will be considered "retained personal data" irrespective of their retention period (unless covered by exemptions), they will always be subject to the transparency requirements under both of the aforementioned provisions.

Importantly, Article 21(2) of the Constitution guarantees the secrecy of all means of communication, with limitations only allowed by legislation on public interest grounds. Article 4 of the Telecommunications Business Act, according to which the secrecy of communications handled by a telecommunications carrier shall not be violated, implements this confidentiality requirement at the level of statutory law. This has been interpreted as prohibiting the disclosure of communications information, except with the consent of users or if based on one of the explicit exemptions from criminal liability under the Penal Code (77).