A Visualization of the Internet
Tell me if you’ve heard this all before. I’d imagine online life was simple back then, back when the The Mentor and his kind discovered the computer, then travelled the electron, and the switch and started to marvel at the beauty of the baud. It was a simpler time because it was a world without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias. It was a world where people judge others for what they say and think, not what they look like. It was a realm where information was sacrosanct, meaning access to computers or anything that may teach something about how the world works should be unlimited and total. It was a universe that allowed for art to be created on a computer and consented to this firm belief that Cyberspace can change your life for the better. If you believe that Cyberspace exists without governance, regulation or rules of any sort, you cannot be more wrong. This is its ethos, its core philosophy, its manifesto. This is the Tao: “We reject: kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code“.
This is the Internet.
There is a clear and present danger to our digital life. This is what it is all about. First, there is fear and uncertainty at using Radio Frequency ID (RFID) to identify and track material, specifically vehicles. Second, there is an increasing dichotomy with regard to intellectual property (SB 880 by E. Angara). Third, there are pending bills in Congress on anti-cybercrime (SB 3213 Trillanes version, SB 3117 Enrile version, and House Bill 6794 by Singson, Angara, del mar, Nicolas, Teodoro, Joson, Villar, et. al.) that seek to subvert civil liberties. Lastly, in spite of all this, there are still unanswered questions on network neutrality and Internet rights.
Like the Great Digital Divide that separates the connected and not connected, there is a great gulf between the real world and the Internet. As the Internet ever so increasingly become part of the real world, governments, and people naturally want to impose their own order. Naturally, there is a huge disconnect between the ethos of the Internet and the real world.
How do we stand on common ground?That we may reject the false choice between safety and ethos?
Life is too short not to have an EVIL PLAN. Life is too short not to do something that mat ters. Life is too short to sleep walk through it, hoping, drea ming, but never quite waking up. Life is too short not to become the per son you were born to be.
It is important to know that all this began with an Evil Plan to avert total annihilation. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency gave birth to the core of what we now know as The Internet: ARPANET to keep US Command and Control alive in the event of nuclear holocaust. Then came Vinton Cerf and his merry band who by December 1974 published “Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program (RFC 675)”. Cerf’s work united different networks and technologies through a common internetwork protocol, and his work coined the term, “internet,” short for internetworking.
Was Cerf aware of the world he would usher by unifying the network?
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see more Lolcats and funny pictures
There is a whole universe as you can see. And for many years, it has been the playground of early adopters, of people who think different. It has created its own culture, with lolcatz and meme, a different universe entire. As Glee Willis once told Time, "it's a family place. It's a place for perverts. It's everything rolled into one".
Why can't government understand this?
Why can't people grasp this?
I. RFID
The Land Transportation Office and the Philippine National Police are studying the use of RFID in vehicles. I can already imagine a world where Police could identify a stolen vehicle with just the use of RFID. Tollways, could be made easier to move to and from highways. Registration of vehicles so much simpler with a magic wave of an item.
Think of RFID as the 21st century equivalent to the plate number. RFID have been used in asset tracking by banks, like Bank of America. It has been used to time races, and also in passports. In Hong Kong, mass transit is paid using the Octopus Card which is also used in vending machines, fast food restaurants and supermarkets.
Oh! On a side note, here's another good use of technology. My friend Roch posted this on her personal blog: Manila's metered taxis! Finally!
Can we agree that when Technology is used this way, it outweighs our concern for safety?
II. Intellectual Property
At the turn of the century, when Google was the young upstart and Yahoo was the public face of the Internet, there was a "magical" service call Napster. Its genius was that it made sharing of files and music so easy that it passed the grandmother test with flying colors.
Boom!
Napster was the opening salvo in the war for Intellectual properly. Suddenly the music industry was stunned. People were downloading music and not only that, were sharing it on the Internet. The war rages on in court rooms around the world. And now Senator Edgardo Angara has brought this intellectual property challenge to the Philippines with Senate Bill 880.
"The Act amending certain provisions of Republic Act 8293 of the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines and for other Purposes" will not help the creative and technological industries already existing nor will it help future Filipinos earn a living wage out of their genius.
There are two articles worth mentioning that show a clear understanding of how Intellectual Property works in the 21st Century. First, I point you to Timothy B. Lee's Ars Technica article on "History Suggests Copyright Crusade is a Lost Cause". Second, Nobel Laureate for Economics Paul Krugman's article for the NYT Magazine, "White Collars Turn Blue".
In Lee's article, he said that if we took a serious look at the analogy between copyright and property right, we'd be surprised at what we could discover. He mentioned a book by economist Hernando de Soto, "The Mystery of Capital", that talked about property regimes. Accordingly, he said that we could draw parallels with what is happening now, in the world of copyrights and the world of the American property system during the early years of the United States.
Lee narrated a world where as Congress and state governments passed more legislation to deal with squatters, the law only became more chaotic. He quoted de Soto who wrote:
Between 1785 and 1890, the United States Congress passed more than five hundred different laws to reform the property system, ostensibly based on the Jeffersonian ideal of putting property into the hands of private citizens. The complicated procedures associated with these laws, however, often hampered this goal... By 1820, the original U.S. property system was in such disarray that the Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote: "Ages will probably lapse before litigations founded on [the U.S. property laws] will be closed.”
Doesn’t it sound all too familiar to you?
Timothy Lee then concluded:
Getting users to stop sharing files and circumventing DRM is likely to prove just as hopeless as getting squatters to leave their homes. There are now millions of people who think nothing of evading the law, and there are simply not enough courts to try more than a tiny fraction of them. Sooner or later, Congress will have to do for the copyright system what it did for property rights in the 19th century: change the law to bring it back into line with peoples’ moral intuitions.
The second article I pointed to, as salient to the issue of Intellectual Property is by Paul Krugman. In “White Collar Turn Blue”, he asked (among other things) was how can you make money in a world when, if you publish anything today, whether software of music, tomorrow, free copies would find itself in the streets of Shanghai, and Mexico City or downloadable somewhere on the Internet? How do you make creativity pay? This is what he wrote:
the answer was already becoming apparent a century ago: creations must make money indirectly, by promoting sales of something else. Just as auto companies used to sponsor Grand Prix racers to spice up the image of their cars, computer manufacturers now sponsor hotshot software designers to build brand recognition for their hardware. And the same is true for individuals. The royalties the Four Sopranos earn from their recordings are surprisingly small; mainly the recordings serve as advertisements for their arena concerts. The fans, of course, go to these concerts not to appreciate the music (they can do that far better at home) but for the experience of seeing their idols in person. Technology forecaster Esther Dyson got it precisely right in 1996: “Free copies of content are going to be what you use to establish your fame. Then you go out and milk it”. In short, instead of becoming a Knowledge Economy we have become a Celebrity Economy.
Why then are we wasting time and energy, writing laws that will never give justice to intellectual property owners? In an Internet age, the Digital Citizen is both a producer and consumer of New Media, how then will this proposed bill protect what people shoot from their mobile phones, or their video recording iPod? The content we make with our digital gadgets is as much as our intellectual property as the songs and movies Hollywood makes. Where are our rights then?
III. Anti-Cybercrime
Yes, the Internet is a place where you can play Farm Town. A nice and simple game on Facebook that a lot of people I know, are addicted to. It is a place where you can chat with your friends without cussing.
I will not lie to you. There are perverts on the Internet. Those seedier places on the Internet are a google away.
In spite of all this, our laws must protect Children from being abused, as much as we must protect women from illegal trafficking. What about identity theft, or hacker break in or how about spam? Then again, is this what the Philippine Cybercrime is all about?
I first heard about House Bill 6794 from Tony Cruz in a tweet. Joey Alarilla fired the first salvo urging this: “Scrutinize Philippine cybercrime bill, Filipino Netizens urged.” @buwayahman from twitter threw in his own opinion with regard to “The Cybercrime Act of 2009“, asking what constitutes cybersex, private acts, and what is indecent or not. Then there is @jesterinexile in a plurk weighing in the violation of our civil liberties if this bill ever sees the light of day.
I have to agree with @buwayahman on this:
(d) Exhibiting live or recorded shows depicting sexual or other obscene or indecent acts;
(e) Posting of pictures depicting sexual or other obscene or indecent acts;
What is obscene and indecent and even sexual is as subjective as what beauty is. If a woman without soliciting favors and who just wanted to share a public snap of herself showing ample cleavage that makes her feel good but would obviously affect every warm blooded human male (and some women), is that indecent? What if in a conversation, a friend of mine started telling a story about observing two turtles in the beach which she would describe to me as “making love” and showing me a video of it, which she took, is that indecent or obscene?
The definition of what is obscene and indecent must be clarified. It also raises the issue, is this enforceable? See, we go back to the ethos of the Internet where free access to information is sacrosanct. Even if this information isn’t for everyone. The whole point is that it should not fall to any government to decide what should and should not be permissible online. It falls on the user, or owner of the network.
This is the part where the wisdom of rough consensus and running code works.
I’ve no problem for instance in barring dating sites or sexually explicit, not safe for work content on a business network. I even block it on my home network to avoid kids stumbling upon it. It is a quick fix. For example, simply log on to OpenDNS and set it to block content you don’t want published to your network.
Not everyone may share that opinion and their rights must be respected too, as much as my own, correct?
(a) Establishing, maintaining or controlling, directly or indirectly, any operation for sexual activity or arousal with the aid of or through the use of a computer system, for a favor or consideration;
That last phrase is obviously a shot against prostitution. It does not bar consenting adults, married or otherwise to do the same for each other.
(b) Recording private acts, including but not limited to sexual acts, without the consent of all parties to the said acts or disseminating any such recording by any electronic means with or without the consent of all parties to the said acts
This portion is obviously to prevent another Hayden Kho from every happening. My problem with this is the matter of “disseminating any such recording by any electronic means with or without the consent of all parties to the said acts”. I’ve no problem if the bill wrote “disseminating any such recording by any electronic means without the consent of all parties to the said acts”. Obviously, the victims of the Kho case were not just the women involved, but Kho himself. It shouldn’t have gone public with someone actively trying to do so. Now this law, prevents people though from giving consent, which is against the very ethos of the Internet because online, there is a place for that sort of thing, and people who like it have the same right to that spot online as much as Google or Yahoo are, or you and I for that matter.
Now comes the part that’s really scary. This is the part where I disagree with the most. It opens a can of worms that goes against civil liberties. It is draconian.
On HB 6794, it says:
SEC. 10. Real-time Collection of Computer Data. – Law enforcement authorities shall be authorized to collect or record by technical or electronic means, and service providers are required to collect or record by technical or electronic means, and/or to cooperate and assist law enforcement authorities in the collection or recording of, traffic data, in real-time, associated with the specified communications transmitted by means of a computer system, subject to existing laws and procedures.
Trillanes’ version has it at Chapter 5, Section 13. Enrile’s version (Chapter 4, Sec. 9) goes like this:
SEC. 9. Real-time collection of Computer Data. – Law enforcement authorities shall be authorized to collect or record by technical or electronic means, and service providers are required to collect or record by technical or electronic means, and/or to cooperate or assist law enforcement authorities in the collection or recording of, traffic data, in real-time, associated with specified communications transmitted by means of a computer system.
This is how I read it.
This is Big Brother. Law enforcement, meaning, government is allowed to to collect information on the network without, a court order. It authorizes government to put packet sniffers on anyone. It deputizes (forcefully) service providers to keep such transactions, just in case government fails to do so for itself.
Every email you send, is now open for the government to read. Every “I love you” sent to your friend over chat or text message is open for interception. Where you’ve been, what you’ve done online is right there for the picking. Uploaded a twitpic about your dog? Government’s got to know about that. Remember, Iran Election? That’s what will happen, every single day.
It seems to me that this is a surrender of our liberty in exchange for a perception of safety.
If our privacy is sacrosanct, where then does the government come in?
Take this issue with between Belo Medical Group and lawyer Argee Guevarra. The latter is being sued for libel because of Argee Guevarra’s status message on facebook regarding Belo Medical. The situation is that Guevarra had his settings, private, meaning only “friends” he has agreed to share his information gets his status. Belo is not one of those friends. Isn’t this an assault on Guevarra’s protected right to free speech and free expression? Isn’t this a violation of his right to privacy? Lawyer Guevarra was quoted by GMA7 saying:
“It’s a first insofar as I’m [being] sued by someone who [was not] added as a friend and is filing the case by proxy,” Guevarra explained. “Friends say that I should look at the invasion of privacy angle but I just told them that I will—if and when I decide to take those who sued me to court for malicious prosecution and perjury.”
This becomes another reason in a long line of grievances that defamation law in the Philippines should be decriminalized.
At the end of the day, an anti-cybercrime bill is less about protecting citizen’s rights and more about breaking it. It becomes more about safety than protecting liberty. It is less about Justice and more about Censorship and Regulation.
IV. The Case for Network Neutrality and Internet Rights
As increasingly Filipinos go online and participate with the larger Network, whether through a computer or through mobile phone, there is a clear and present danger that the Filipino’s right to Free Speech and Free Expression are trampled.
The commercial aspect of those who are against network neutrality is like this: telecom companies seek to impose tiered service model to control the flow of information. That’s one aspect. A very important aspect because Telecoms and by extension media companies would wish to transform the Internet from what it is today, to a model similar to television. That is a mistake.
Proponents of Network Neutrality argue that Internet users ought to be in control of what content they view, what applications they use because this is how the Internet has operated since its inception. The father of the World Wide Web, is also for Network Neutrality. On February 7, 2006, the co-author of the Internet protocol, Vinton Cerf testified before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Hearing on “Network Neutrality” and he said: “Allowing broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success.” This is no different from allowing governments to do so. The Internet must be independent of both corporations and government regulation.
The Philippine government must legislate the principle of network neutrality to safeguard Filipino users’ Internet rights. It means that the Internet in the Philippines must not have restriction on content, site or platform, on kind of equipment attached or the modes of communication allowed on said network and communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams. Users themselves must be allowed to decide what they want to get from the Internet.
Italy and Brazil had this to say about an internet bill of rights:
“Privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, universal accessibility, network neutrability, interoperability, use of format and open standards, free access to information and knowledge, right to innovation and a fair and competitive market and consumers safeguard.”
A worthy read too is this Civil Society Declaration to the World Summit on the Information Society: “Shaping Information Societies for Human Needs:”
We envision societies where human knowledge, creativity, cooperation and solidarity are considered core elements; where not only individual creativity, but also collective innovation, based on cooperative work are promoted. Societies where knowledge, information and communication resources are recognised and protected as the common heritage of humankind; societies that guarantee and foster cultural and linguistic diversity and intercultural dialogue, in environments that are free from discrimination, violence and hatred.
We are conscious that information, knowledge and the means of communication are available on a magnitude that humankind has never dreamt of in the past; but we are also aware that exclusion from access to the means of communication, from information and from the skills that are needed to participate in the public sphere, is still a major constraint, especially in developing countries. At the same time information and knowledge are increasingly being transformed into private resources which can be controlled, sold and bought, as if they were simple commodities and not the founding elements of social organisation and development. Thus, as one of the main challenges of information and communication societies, we recognise the urgency of seeking solutions to these contradictions.
It becomes a matter of ensuring that future innovation and creativity continue unrestricted and that that core ethos of what the Internet is, not be trampled by governments and corporations seeking to control the Internet. The governing body of the Internet, the Internet Engineering Task Force is well aware of this.
Guaranteeing Network Neutrality and Internet rights must be an Imperative of the next government of the Philippines.
V. Conclusion
There remain open questions on digital rights.
The Digital Rights Landscape
Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address wrote:
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Is our government wise and frugal then? Perhaps, the key is for a government that balances public responsibility with private enterprise.
However it goes, I am certain that these issues of privacy, these questions on justice for victims of cybercrime, this unanswered need for Internet rights is all about responsibility. The trouble is, it is the Filipino government itself that wishes to break what the ethos of the Internet is. We’ve let our fears and uncertainties wrapped around a perception of safety and morality to overshadow our ideals. We must reject this.
The Filipino Digital Citizen faces a Clear and Present Danger. This is the Challenge. This is a case for Network Neutrality. It is all about guaranteeing the core ethos of what the internet is. Free access to Information and knowledge is sacrosanct. That our privacy and our data are guaranteed and protected as much as our Constitutional right to free speech and free expression and that all devices must be interoperable through open standards; that our government guarantees the right to innovation in a fair and competitive market.
Our questions in 1993 are still questions in 2009. I say this with a degree of confidence because Time Magazine in 1993 had an article which was written by Philip Elmer-Dewitt titled, “First Nation in Cyberspace“. Dewitt mentioned crackdowns on raunchier discussion groups on the Internet. You can draw parallel threads with that and our discussion on anti-cybercrime law (which is really a form of censorship), as well as our discussion on Intellectual Property, which, as Lee put it, to solve we must “change the law to bring it back into line with peoples’ moral intuitions”.
At the end of the day, this quote from John Gilmore of the Electronic Frontier Foundation is an axiom that also holds true: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
This is the challenge and opportunity that we face. Let us join our running code with the rest of the world, and let us lead by example, nations of the world who largely remain clueless as we are now. Let us declare that the Filipino is for rough consensus and running code.
This is the Conscience of the Digital Citizen.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Identifying vehicles should not be much of a problem. Aren’t license plates supposed to ensure that? My question for the legal eagles here is whether RFID will violate privacy rights since that would go beyond vehicle ID but into freedom of movement.
blackshama, they won’t violate privacy rights. the device has a radius of 10 meters. so unless the entire metropolis is wired to detect every vehicle and that in turn sends out data to a google map to identify position, i find it hard to imagine how the hell you can track a vehicle.
Even if it was, it would be a great way to track stolen cars.ItRFID would be an awesome way and novel way to identify colorum (did i spell that right) public transport. Just to trim down all those, would be, for me proof that it works.RFIDS are used the world over. In this case, I think it is a novel way to improve our system that outweigh any privacy concern.
“…the device has a radius of 10 meters.”
It is not the transmission radius of the transmitting device that matters, it is the reception range of the tracking device that counts.
Actually in the world of electronics, a signal transmission strength of 10 meters is more than enough for a very long range receiver device to initiate an electronic emission trace. In today’s modern and advanced technology, intelligence surveillance satellites with a footprint diameter that could cover the whole southeast Asia with just one scanning sweep are very much capable of detecting such low-level electromagnetic emissions.
RFID is similar to the technology employed in Verichip (verichipcorp dot com). People embedded with this microchip (about the size of a grain of rice) can be located by the use of satellites.
Surely the technology can be used in the wrong way. The basis for the technology is here even in the Philippines. This isn’t Churchill’s “lights of perverted science” but could be one.
In the Phillipines, how many of us are aware that the RFID technology is already being implemented (without proper public consultation?) in the new design of the Philippine passport?
Some big corporations operating in our country are already using RFID technology in their company ID system.
In most advanced countries abroad, RFID technology is very much used in various applications including driver licenses, passports, credit cards, and inventory tags.
Did you know that the transmission from your laptop’s Wireless Networking device also emits a unique Radio Frequency IDentification with a strength of transmission that could reach more than 10 meters in radius?
How about the cellphone? :-)
cocoy:
have you heard about lojack? newer cars sold in the US have lojack bundled in the package.
May I also point out The Jester-In-Exile’s post re: RFID. good read.
colorum is correct,
and distinct from the colon or your column,
which is too long to be read in one evening.
I would note, however, that the digital age also delivers to the people a way to monitor the shenanigans of big brother.
Still, evil abounds,
and one is best to walk into the digital jungle with eyes open wide . . .
Joe
thanks Joe!
cocoy,
anytime.
Okay, I did my reading, and find those sections permitting warrantless, at-will tapping of real time internet usage rather oppressive. I cannot imagine authorizing people to snoop on my surfing, and wonder if these representatives recognize that they operate for and at the whim of the citizens, rather than for their own self-interest. Like the Right of Reply bill, this section suggests legislators are paranoid and don’t much prize granting their citizens privacy or even the dignity of trust. Like, get a warrant, show just cause, before prowling about in my private life like, . . . well, like a pervert . . .
Joe
“so unless the entire metropolis is wired to detect every vehicle and that in turn sends out data to a google map to identify position, i find it hard to imagine how the hell you can track a vehicle.”
‘coy,
could not that be the logical and ultimate purpose of this technology…to see everything. for what’s the sense in limiting the scope to 10 meters radius when it it could be done more? i think the announced limit of 10 meters radius is just a ploy to stifle objections. i’m not tech savvy…just my 2-cents.
Bert, I point you to jester’s piece. he goes in depth with the technology. RFID is passive technology than active.
RFID technology is both active and passive, though many current uses are the passive types because of costs.
Current uses of active RFID twchnology are in personnel tracking and localizing.
the problem with the RFID is that it didnt go thru bidding, and that it was not a separate contract. the Php350 price may be correct, or it maybe higher than what it might have been.
gabby, i am unfamiliar with the bidding, if it was done right or not.
The digital age has taken hostage our civil liberties. This is one
of the bad side of the technology. It is also expensive to implement.
Expense for the government and to the vehicle owners.
If you are a good hacker. You can do a good hacking and reformatting
of the RFID. A computer prodigy in the U.S. can do that.
I’m surprised at you guys. You go up and arms on RFID. But you haven’t said anything about HB 6794 which is MORE insidious! The government gets to actively monitor the Internet— without a court order and you guys are so bloody worried about RFID.
Or about protecting Digital Rights, which the government in their wisdom wants a crackdown on.
Iran election scenario!
talk about misplaced priorities.
could u post a link to the bill? its hard to comment without knowing what that bill is saying. thanks!
Gabby, you can find the links, third paragraph of my post *points above*
http://anticybercrimeact.wordpress.com/h-b-6794-cybercrime-prevention-act-of-2009/
thanks. looks like its all good. from trillanes’ version, all current laws will be respected, and warrants will be required.
real time is just a formality. a court order/warrant will still be required.
kaya lang nilagay yung real time para technicallly mayroon silang babalikan.In reality government has to rely on the service providers.
pag di ganun ang final version or it will be purposely vague, then don’t forget to blog about it.
Karl,
That is good to know, about warrants. I think this is a bill that warrants close attention.
I also wonder about public trust, musings. Why I have so little of it, and how much of this absence can be attributed to the Legislature (through midnight raids such as HR1109), how much to online fear-raising through incomplete information such as found in this blog, and how much to my own laziness at finding out the facts before casting harsh judgments.
Maybe a third each, eh? I shall work on the last third.
Joe
Joe,
We can have those sentiments about our legislature.
We even think that they are big bad landlords,crimelords,warlords,druglords,tracilords…
and yet we still vote for them.
in fairness to cocoy, I don’t think fear raising was his intention,it will be always up to the readers to dig deeper.
i appreciate legislation being discussed in blogs,we always complain that they never allow the public to be involved in legislation.
i say it is the otherway around, we are involved, even a congressional resolution which is far from being a law without anyone acting on it, we already raise a howl.
this is where i agree with the benignOne, we just lack follow through because of ningas cogon and always end up with pwede na yan or in other words the next best thing(mediocre).
lastly, we all have our own 33 percent to work on.
Karl
Karl,
Yes, I agree, and was musing “in general”. I greatly appreciate cocoy’s bringing the matter forward, and if the House bill contains no language about warrants, that is worth throwing up the fear factor.
But I think newspaper editorials and articles, blogs, or newscasts warrant being read or heard with some measure of scepticism, and that, indeed, the value of FV is that it brings both cocoy’s responsible voice, and yours, to bear on a matter of considerable importance.
Good to hear from you.
Joe
section 10 does not mention they get a warrant first.
then if there is a way for us to be involved in bicam conferences then that is the way to go.
The budget insertion issue was a result of the closed door policies of congress with regards to bicam conferences.
I will review further the bills in the senate.
So Trillanes is out of the equation.
He might be in the top 3 of the number of bills filed, but they are all useless if no one bothers to defend it.
I see that it has a powerful proponent in Enrile so the chances of it moving with the warrant provision intact is high.
No matter what we say about Enrile, when he is for a bill, he supports it,ano pa kaya kung sa kanya.
The bogey is his martial law stigma, which I dare say nalimutan na ng karamihan.
The part on the trillanes bill where it is about the the search and seizure of computer data involves real time data.
http://www.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/110859785!.pdf
as in enrile’s bill
http://www.senate.gov.ph/lisdata/108659639!.pdf
lumayo pa ako sa house bill meron din pala.
so the reconciliation of the bill in the bicam would not have a problem with regards to your warrantless search concerns .
Karl and everyone else who’ve given their comment thus far.
I appreciate the comments and all. Still, no one is stepping out to ensure Rights for Citizens. There is no talk of ensuring network neutrality. There is no talk of guaranteeing Free Speech and Free Expression online for Filipinos. There is talk of more jail time and talk about government looking into our lives. And we talk about safety, but not about liberty.
To borrow, Benjamin Franklin: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Call me unsatisfied with how the law is in the Philippines or what our priorities are.
Cocoy,
You wish conversation about liberty, which unfettered snooping would abandon.
I wrote, pertaining to a (perhaps) warrantless internet snooping provision: “Like the Right of Reply bill, this section suggests legislators are paranoid and don’t much prize granting their citizens privacy or even the dignity of trust. Like, get a warrant, show just cause, before prowling about in my private life like, . . . well, like a pervert . . . “
What more do you wish? We should be free to think, write privately or publicly, air grievances, without the presumed association of our words with subversion, and without the heavy hand of authority ruling over us like some mad auntie with a switch.
The law, if not tamed with warrants, is another abridgment of basic human rights, like taxing books or sanctioning the murder of journalists by inaction, or death squads. It is the “way” of the Philippines. Power is power, and power with a gun, or power to manipulate the enforcers of justice (police) or halls of justice (courts), rather comes with the territory in this mockery of a democracy that is supposed to be of and for the public, but is not.
How much sharper do you want it?
People are cowed or bought off. There is no Civil Liberties Union, the Ombudsman is lolling on the beach somewhere as the civic masters raid the public coffers at will. There is no place for a right-minded Filipino to turn. March on the streets . . . again? Haul out the generals . . . again?
All there is . . . is the vote, and any Congressman voting for unfettered snooping should be thrown out of office on his ass, or head, for there is little distinction.
Where is the legal recourse for citizens? I am unaware of any.
In a nation of laws, its citizens have been cut off from speedy, fair justice.
Freedom? I fear that Filipinos over-respect authority, are afraid to challenge it, and maybe for good reason. It is preferable to live. The freedom to breath is quite precious.
If you want something, simply say what it is you want, and tell us who are waddling in frustration what we can practically do next. I blog. I can’t vote. I raise my voice, I’m thrown out.
Joe
and yeah, that’s the sorry state of Philippine democracy. yeah, i know. re: ombudsman, etc. wrote a paper on it recently.
I have my concerns too .sa ngayon pa lang, you can go to starbucks or any place that offers wi fi you will be surprised to learn that some ccontents of your hard drive is being copied and all the culprit has to do is to get near enough to you.
Even your friend can still your data.
I sometimes see politicos in such places with their laptops on and surrounded by “strangers” with their laptops on, as well.
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Good thing you mentioned that Belo and Atty Guevarra.
Remember the gospel according to Tracy. She took pains of trying to defend herself and all she had to do was to say wala kayong pakialam that she just sent the message to her online friends.
(The gospel according to Tracy was about someone joking about the outreach program she did staying with Aetaas for a few days,blahblahblah)
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Rights of citizens?
I read somewhere in one of your links I think it was Jeter’s.
It was about knowing your rights when you are invited to go to the precinct,etc.
As GIJOes said knowing is just half of the battle, what to do with that knowledge is another story. You can raise fear,you can look the other way or be active and get involved.
How many of us here seen people on TV with their face bloated like siopao and with black eyes,sa tingin ko unang instinct natin buti nga sa kanya kriminal kasi. Or would our initial reaction be: kailangan umangal sa CHR yan, sobra naman ang ginawa sa kanya?
I wish and I hope that i am wrong na unang instinct natin ay sabihing buti nga.
Thanks for the space.
Invasion of privacy (and recessions) are the hallmarks of 21st century reality, dude. We are forced to accept it. The digital age is both boon and bane, so we can’t expect to have our cake and eat it too. There’s nothing we can ever do to undo it either, because legal efforts to gather personal information are globally entrenched and here to stay.
Most websites tracks stats, so privacy is already hard to come by. I suspect the NBI possesses mad hacking skills, or at least the resources to get whatever info they want without resorting to due process. iac, this HK incident, as a pretext, is just more posturing to enact laws that appease the public despite these guys already having the means to do so.
also to consider Cocoy: sometimes it’s an administrations effort to put their stamp on policies aimed at recent concerns. RH Bill 5043 is a similar attempt to put this administration ‘on the record’ with population control. If enacted, their butts are covered, and nobody can point the finger at them for sitting idly by while your population gradually overwhelms the system. At the end of the equation though, it’s just too difficult to know what these guys are really up to, and an alopecic experience to stay on top of things whether their motives are conspiratorial or not.
imho- in the context of all other abuses throughout the system, the communications industry is one of the most well regulated business de jure, if not de facto, this country has seen in a long time. The problem lies squarely with local law enforcement. They can’t be trusted with such liberties.
I like this post.
I think we’re already progressing too much to realize how technology is endangering our way of living.
You know I think Intellectual Property is a bit questionable. My teacher back in college argued that human inspiration was meant to be for the benefit of human kind. An example would probably be Marie Curie. She “refused” to patent her process of isolating radium to let other scientist use it unhindered. How fast did we reach nuclear energy after.
I just think the natural way intellectual property rights is ineffective is an act of God that is preventing individuals not to be too enterprising but to think of more of service to the people.
We are already too much property-oriented as a basis for happiness. Now we even try to own intellectual property. What if someone also thinks of it?
There are human progress in terms of letting go Intellectual Property. There’s Creative Commons and Open Source Software. Think Firefox, Open Course Ware (Free Online Classrooms!).
RFID
I fear this process. I think this is already a step behind putting chips in our bodies. I read that there are already people who wish for this to happen on the basis of convenience.
How RFID works and a demonstration of how RFID-based credit cards can be hacked:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/technology-explained-how-do-rfid-tags-work/
Thank you.