Cybercrime Law: Reviving History
Noisy.
Standing.
Behaved.
When the teacher was not around the class president or any other officer present would write these three things on the board.
On that chart would be listed the boisterous, ones who can't stand sitting all day, and also those who quietly kept to their own worlds.
We have been regulated since elementary, but it could be too much, that "policing" at the basic level of society.
Have you ever been listed Noisy for merely talking with your seatmate? That sure was a way to embarass and mar your clean records. And you can't comprehend why it's considered "Noisy," and why keeping one's mouth shut
alone meant one is "Behaved."
Sucks right?
Outside the classroom we have a similar mechanism for monitoring the Noisy/Standing and the Behaved, well, actually just the first.
And I bet if the Noisy-Standing-Behaved was the law, I would be sent to detention or the prefect of discipline for saying above that it sucked.
A foul word in a foul article.
With someone watching your every move, wouldn't you feel scared or more importantly, violated?
It is not ironic, nor surprising, that the proponent of the libel clause in the said law is Tito Sotto, who has not manifested any kind of remorse for allegedly copy-pasting blogs and speeches.
What is ironic is that we do not sanction those who do not respect freedom of expression, and an Intellectual Property Code that protects ideas; that our Constitution has a provision saying we shall be granted access to public information but does not have an enabling law to allow such access, with the Aquino leadership failing to pass the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act which is pending in Congress for 14 years.
But that we have a Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 which could crack down on the Noisy critics of the government and those who Stand up against abuses and measures they deem repressive, signed by a president whose father was a journalist and a political prisoner of his time.
But that it ignored the United Nations Human Rights Council's declaration that our libel laws are "excessive" and that we should decriminalize libel, as they found that it violates human rights, by stipulating that anyone found guilty of committing libel on Facebook or Twitter will face 12 years in prison.
That declaration calling for an amendment of the libel law was made exactly a year ago, in October 2011, rendering our libel law outdated.
We are one in the battle against cybersex, online pornography and credit card fraud as they prey on the innocent and are loci of human or specifically, child, trafficking.
We all get irritated by spam or viruses, identity thieves and hackers who have bad motives; We all do not want anyone illegally accessing information we would rather keep to ourselves.
But that law would allow access to your profile and which could be used against you, even when you can't comprehend how that is considered "Noisy" or "libelous."
But that law would safeguard against cybercrimes at the expense of our right and freedom of speech and of expression.
If this is considered libelous, even if we were simply exchanging opinion on how that law could affect our rights and freedoms, you wouldn't be reading this column piece right now.
We do not say that marring someone’s reputation with false statements should be tolerated. However with the vague law, who could say who's going to get listed for detention, and if grounds are justifiable?
The matter is in the court's hands. Various individuals and groups have now submitted their respective petitions to the Supreme Court to declare the Cybercrime Law illegal.
People are now expressing disapproval of the said law, especially its libel clause, on- or offline. With the law in effect today, if anyone deems their shared memes, photos or statuses as libelous, then each and every one of them could say "Au revoir" to their social life and go to jail.
The Filipinos are not alone in the struggle. Ukraine is also facing a bill that will recriminalize defamation, the approval of which journalists staunchly oppose.
In a seeming echo of the Philippines' act of not heeding the UNHRC's call despite being a UN member country, Reporters Without Borders said on its site that the bill recriminalizing defamation in Ukraine "would run counter to the worldwide trend and would clearly violate the international conventions Ukraine has ratified...the European Convention on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."
The group also described the act as a "return to the past" and journalists see it as a threat to freedom of information. "Journalists already have to confront many dangers and an increase in self-censorship inside news
organizations. Now they would have to fear judicial harassment as well. The resulting intimidatory effect would threaten the very existence of independent journalism," it said.
In an online article, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism said, “Atty. Jose Jesus Disini, a legal expert on information technology, said the Cybercrime Law gives government vast powers to shut down websites, search homes and offices, and confiscate computers and hard drives on the basis of prima facie evidence only. This is tantamount to giving an executive body vast powers of censorship, he said.”
We are being taught to "Behave," stop talking about issues affecting societies and individuals and to keep to our own worlds.
Just because those in government cannot handle criticism, just because it cannot or would not provide basic social services anymore and keeps privatizing schools, hospitals and soon transportation.
We are at a point where as we remember the Marcos regime for declaring Martial Law, ours could go down in history as that which passed the e-Martial Law ver. 2012. J