PHILIPPINES: A FREE AND RESPONSIBLE CYBER PLAYER

Filipino Internet users have been adjudged the freest in Asia and the 6^th freest in the world, according to Freedom House, a think tank based here in Washington, D.C.  South Korea is ranked the second freest in Asia.

This was before the Cybercrime Prevention Act was enacted and became effective. It included the crime of Internet Libel and prescribed a penalty higher than what the Revised Penal Code imposes for defamatory statements.

The Philippine version of the Cyber Law was patterned after the Convention On Cybercrime adapted by the Council of Europe and other non-members that included the United States and the Philippines.

The United States has signed and ratified it while the Philippines who has signed it still needs to ratify it.

The freest in the world is Estonia and the second freest is the United States. What is common to both is the fact that Libel is not considered cybercrime in their laws. Although their laws impose civil liability for libelous statements, there has never been anybody imprisoned for Libel.

The Constitutional safeguards protecting Freedom of Expression and their respective jurisprudence, especially in the United States, overwhelmingly support the supremacy of Free Speech over Libel.

Estonia is also a signatory of the Convention On Cybercrime. It has also ratified it. In fact, it also patterned its Cybercrime Prevention Law after the Convention On Cybercrime.

Defining Internet Libel as a cybercrime would surely lower our ranking among the freest in the world. But the ranking is really less important than its effect of discouraging the free flow of ideas between and among Filipino netizens and with other Internet users of the world.

Being the freest also has some drawbacks. Estonia and United States have been victims as well as targets of cyber attacks.

In Estonia, they experienced Cyber attacks such as “hacking, defacement, spam, DDoS including botnets, incitement to hatred and violence at internet websites and chat rooms”, providing guidelines on how to attack, including lists of Estonian servers. The target websites and servers were the Office of the President, Government, Ministries, Police, Banks, Online media, Prime Minister’s Party.

Since then, Estonia developed a CyberSecurity Strategy and passed some new provisions in the Penal Code, an Electronic Communications Act, Information Society Services Act, Data Protection Act, and Public Information Act but all with safeguards recognizing International Civil and Political Rights.

According to FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) data cited in a U.S. Senate testimony, “annual cybercrime profits and damages have hit a trillion dollars.”

The tools that are increasingly used by hackers for these cyber crimes are called “botnets”. Symantec estimates that there are about 3.5 million to 5.4 million botnets worldwide.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported that companies such as Sony, Google, Lockheed Martin and two of South Korea’s largest banks have been hacked. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Citigroup announced that their computers were breached  several months ago.

In effect, the battleground against terror and crime is no longer limited to Air, Land and Sea. Cyberspace has become a place for warfare. For this reason, the U.S. Military has declared it a military domain.

China, for example, has been accused of hacking Google’s infrastructures. On the other hand, the former accused the United States of being an “information imperialist,” and of using the Internet to overthrow governments.

The Pentagon, despite budgetary problems, “requested US$3.2 billion worth of funding to be allocated to “cyber security”.  A U.S. Cyber Command has been established and in fact, has had operational capacity.  Cyber Commands are likewise being established in other countries. It was reported that India is looking to establish a “Cyber Control and Command Authority” while China has established a “Blue Army” to defend the People’s Liberation Army from attacks on its networks.

The Philippines could be a major player in the Cyber World. With the right approach and attitude, we could be another source of cyber engineers, cyber warriors, cyber technicians, and cyber security experts.

It could accelerate the country’s economic development exponentially. It could be the destination for more foreign ICT investments.