Philippines: Cybercrime Law

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As of today, the number of internet users all over the world has reached more than 3billion, and 1.35% of them are from the Philippines as reported by www.internetlivestats.com. Philippines, with a current internet population of 39,470,847 and still counting, is also placed on the top 20 countries with the most number of internet users taking the 16^th spot where China is on the 1^st spot at 641,601,070 internet users.

Of the more than 100million people in the Philippines, 39.43% have an Internet connection and most of the users have social media accounts as Filipinos use social media as a way of communication. Browsing the news feed, sharing videos, taking selfies, posting status and food porn, chatting and exchanging comments are the most common activities on social media and other social online platform. Based on the survey of 24/7 Wall St., 93.9% of Filipino users were reportedly signed up to Facebook while Twitter has a 16.1% penetration rate—a reason why The Philippines is known as “The Social Networking Capital of the World”.

As Internet users increase every year, crime over the Internet is also growing. Extortion, libel, estafa, cyber bullying, cybersex, child pornography, and identity theft are the most reported cases over the years: what is the medium they are using? It’s Facebook! One of the incident cases reported by http://www.philstar.com/ last June 2012 is the extortion of the 15yr old high school student who blackmailed his classmate asking to give him Php15, 000 or he’ll post the nude photos of the victim through Facebook. The said student pretend to be a girl named Yuri Kimberly and asked the victim to take nude photos and send it to him. After sending the photos, the blackmailing began. The victim asked for help from the NBI before the deadline given by Yuri. At the meeting place where the transaction will take place, the NBI setup a surveillance camera to record the suspect collecting the Php15, 000 clips on the victim’s notebook which is also a way to confirm that the suspect is just around the school and sadly, a classmate of the victim. (Source: http://www.philstar.com/metro/813030/teen-nabbed-extortion-through-facebook).

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Due to growing crimes on the Internet, the Republic Act No. 10175 or Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 was enacted by the House of Representative of the Philippines on June 4, 2014 and the Senate on June 5, 2012. The Cybercrime law will penalize all illegal acts done through the Internet such as child pornography, cybersex, identity theft, cybersquatting, illegal access to data and, the most controversial, online libel. This law was signed by President Benigno Aquino, III on September 12, 2012. As expected, numerous petitions against provisions of the law appeared. One of this is the petition against online libel provisions which will force each user to limit their post on their own social media and other online accounts. Of course, many lawyers in Manila and users believe that this provision violated the freedom of expression and freedom of speech so netizens expressed their protest through social media. They even changed their profile picture into plain black on Facebook and made the hashtag #notocybercrimelaw trend over Twitter to show their unity against the new enactment. There are also reports about a group of programmers who’ve hacked into some of the websites of the government.

Supreme Court decided to issue a temporary restraining order to stop the implementation of the Cybercrime law within 120 days last October 9, 2012. But on May 24, 2013, DOJ declared that the online libel provision together with child pornography and cybersquatting, which are already punishable under other laws, shall not be restrained. And last February 18, 2014 the Supreme Court declared that most of Cybercrime law provisions are now constitutional including the online libel. Though online libel has become illegal, and is penalized at a degree higher than just libel, there are plenty of conditions that the author of the post has to meet before a post may qualify as libelous material online. Also, different from the previous law, abettors of a libelous post are not liable should the post qualifies as illegal—only the original poster has the burden of sanction.