Cybercrime Act is 'double threat' to PHL media

A New York-based watchdog group on Saturday urged the government to get to work soonest in amending the Anti-Cybercrime Act, as it scored the measure's double threat to Philippine media.

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Asia Program Coordinator Bob Dietz warned that the law allows the Justice Department to summarily shut down a website, or a politician to stifle media with a libel threat.

"Better get to work before some thin-skinned politico decides to silence a tweeting critic with the threat of a 12-year jail sentence," Dietz said in a blog post.

PHL gov't made a mistake with 'bewildering law'

Dietz said it was "bewildering" that the government coupled a law targeting so-called cybercrimes like cybersex, child pornography, identity theft, and spamming with the "hoary and over-used concept of libel."

Even more mysterious, he added, was why the government felt it should "suspend its lengthy heritage of due legal process by giving the Department of Justice power to shut down websites and monitor all online activities without a warrant."

"The no due process/no warrant clause might be the first to go. But, for journalists and other citizens, the libel laws are equally threatening. Under the new law, comments posted online and judged libelous are criminal offenses, with a penalty of up to 12 years in jail —a much longer sentence than for libel in traditional media," he said.

He noted the government admitted last Oct. 4 it had made a mistake when presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the government will "recognize and respect efforts not only to raise these issues in court, but to propose amendments to the law in accordance with constitutional processes."

Dietz noted the staff at Malacañang had claimed it did not know how those suspensions of due process and overzealous libel clauses made it into the law that Aquino signed last month.

He also noted the Palace has tried its best to distance itself since then, even though President Benigno Aquino III publicly signed it into law.

Politicians accusing critics of libel a 'time-honored sport'

On the other hand, he said the online libel clause is "chilling, to say the least."

"Politicians accusing critics of libel is a time-honored sport in the Philippines, though very often one which does not bring a conviction. Well-heeled, well-lawyered politicos love to harass their critics, cowing them into silence through the threat of lengthy, draining lawsuits making their way languidly through the Philippine court system," he said.

He noted that in 2006, the government under then President Gloria Arroyo filed at least 10 different criminal libel lawsuits against 43 journalists seeking damages totaling P70 million.

Penalties for criminal libel convictions in the Philippines also include imprisonment of six months to six years.

"Libel-wise, that was an extraordinarily bad year, but also an indicator of how public figures, corrupt or not, go about protecting their image," Dietz said.


Mounting international unrest vs Philippine law

On October 5, New York-based international online rights group Access decried the Cybercrime Act as a "loophole-ridden law".

Access lamented the emerging new reality in the Philippines is that sharing a link, clicking "Like" on Facebook, or retweeting could mean 12 years in jail.

It said the Cybercrime Prevention Act "is so broad and loophole-ridden that a wide range of online activity could be considered libelous."

"Even if you don't write the material, just sharing it with someone online could land you in prison," it said.

Because of the unjust law, it said Filipinos have been protesting in the streets and online to stand up for their rights.

On September 18, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) issued a statement in which it pointed out that the libel laws underpinning the Act go against United Nations declarations.

"The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has determined that the criminal sanctions imposed on those accused of libel are incompatible with Article 19, paragraph 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)," the statement said.

"EFF is gravely concerned about the implications of the libel provision in the Cybercrime Act and supports local journalists and free expression advocates in opposing it," the statement concluded.

A day later, the Asia-Pacific chapter of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) backed the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) in "expressing serious concern" over the Act.

"The IFJ is greatly concerned that the inclusion of online content in the Act could be used to curtail freedom of expression online, " the IFJ said.

"We are further concerned that the government of the Philippines continues to delay the passing of the (Freedom of Information bill), which clearly stands against their stated commitment to press freedom," the IFJ added, referring to a delayed bill that would have facilitated public access to government documents.

On September 28, the international Human Rights Watch (HRW) called the Act "unconstitutional".

"The cybercrime law needs to be repealed or replaced. It violates Filipinos’ rights to free expression and it is wholly incompatible with the Philippine government’s obligations under international law," said HRW Asia director Brad Adams.

"So long as it stands, the new cybercrime law will have a chilling effect over the entire Philippine online community," Adams warned

Source:-
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/stor...ble-threat-to-phl-media-intl-journalists-warn

I hadn't taken too much notice of this before. But then we found so many family and friends getting worried and stressed about FB Twitter and the like. Including forums

Don't do this don't do that, be careful etc etc

Why?

Well if you read the above it may be a helpful starter.

Here's what caught my eye

You have to be careful when it come to "libel". Especially if the word "jail" is connected :shock:

President Benigno Aquino III is declaring war on his own people with his position that online libel should remain a punishable offense under the Anti-Cybercrime Act, the National Union of Journalists said Friday.

In a statement, the NUJP scored Aquino for insisting that the provision on online libel should not be removed, to give victims a form of "redress."

"We now have a president who has openly declared war on his own people," the NUJP said on its website.

Several groups had objected to the new law, saying the provision on online libel may threaten the right to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

The NUJP said that if Aquino insists on keeping online libel in the law, it could only mean Filipinos were never his bosses at all.

"This can only mean one thing — we are not his bosses at all, if we ever were in the first place," it lamented.

On the other hand, the NUJP quoted Thomas Jefferson as once saying, “If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it; he is obligated to do so.”

Resistance and defiance

The NUJP said the only response to an unjust law - and the president who signed it - is resistance and defiance.

"Clearly, this law is unjust. The only response to it and a president who, as his factotums have repeatedly said, signed it with his full approval can only be resistance and defiance," it said.

It called on all Filipino journalists and news organizations "to stand up to this brazen attempt to wrest away our rights and liberties."

"We call on the Filipino people to stand up and defend our right to freedom of expression ... Let us show this government that, whatever it may think, we ARE the boss," it added

Source:-
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/stor...-on-people-by-keeping-libel-in-cybercrime-law

The cyberlibel law is "for real", and like others I have found many of my Pinoy friends getting very concerned about it.

First, we need to understand that in the Philippines libel, like adultery (and, in the words of Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny", "I kid you not, gentlemen!") is a criminal offence.

In Britain, we are often told that we have some of the most draconian libel laws on the planet, and our American friends are often horrified at the "constraints that we impose on Free Speech", but here as in most nations libel is a tort, a civil wrong giving rise to a right to damages, not a crime.

In the Philippines, libel is a crime, leading to a jail sentence of up to six years.

The legislature debated and passed a law dealing with Internet crimes like child porn, spamming, cybersquatting, identity theft and so on, and this was welcomed by the business process outsourcing industry (aka call centres etc!) but tacked onto it a provision making libel on the Internet a crime with double the penalties that apply to the crime of libel in any other medium.

A minimum of six, and a a maximum of twelve, years in jail apply to the crime of libelling someone in a blog post, a bulletin board, discussion forum, etc.

A quick look at some political background may be pertinent (and I may be straying close to cyberlibel here myself!)

During the readings of the RH Bill, the Senate Majority Leader, Tito Sotto, was accused of copying the contents of not one butr two speeches, one from an American blog and the other from a speech by President Kennedy.

The Senate President, JP Enrile, has recently published an autobiography; the accuracy of some of his recollections have been called into question on the Internet.

Both men voted in favour of the bill.

The law has been referred to the Supreme Court as being unconstitutional; the SC has yet to rule.

Quite a good Wikipedia article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybercrime_Prevention_Act_of_2012

About 5 years ago, a Filipino journalist (Alex Adonis) was sent to prison for two years because of defamatory comments he made about a former Speaker of the Philippines House of Representatives.

Earlier this year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee declared that jailing was a breach of Adonis' Human Rights. That was the first time the UNHRC had ever made such a declaration. The hope was that this would send a message to other countries where libel was still considered a crime; it still is in many EU states and journalists in those EU States can and still are sent to jail for libel.

Libel (including Seditious libel) was a crime under Common Law in the UK until about 5 years ago when an Act of Parliament abolished that. Aquino recently expressed his own view that libel should not remain a crime in the Philippines. So, it does rather beg the question why Aquino supported the Cybercrime Act which has just criminalized libel on the internet.

A bunch of students were apprehended and prevented from graduating after they commented something offensive on a facebook post about their institution.

Think the case is currently pending.

Oh dear, how naive.

Although there is a Temporary Restraining Order in effect, I believe that the Supreme Court will permit the Act to come into Law at the end of the TRO. There may be a few presentational changes made but these won't amount to much. When it does come into force, all emails, forum posts and online conversations (Skype, YM etc.,) will be monitored by the government's new anti-cybercrime unit for which an allocation of some 5-6 Million Pesos per annum will be made to cover its costs.

I do support the child protection and counter human-trafficking aspects covered by the Act but I have little faith in them being used except against foreigners. My basis for this is this: a self-confessed pimp, who admitted to supplying children for the purposes of prostitution, came forward as a witness in the Ellah Joy Pique case. His claims were found to be entirely phoney but he was never arrested or charged based on his "confession".

Well, I hope that the new CJ will strike down the "libel" bits; I have no real problem with the rest of the Act. Aquino signed it because to refuse to do so would lead to charges that he is in favour of pederasty, etc. But he can tell the CJ to knock off that bit - UNLESS Enrile tells Aquino not to do that, because an attack on his autobiography will weaken his son's prospects for the Senate.

The allocated budget is laughably inadequate - China spends billions of renminbi on this - and so one must assume that a few shakedowns of the wealthy but politically weak (read: foreigners) will be undertaken to try to top up the department's funds.

If the libel provisions are not struck out, that is pretty much an end to open political discourse on the Internet in the Philippines. Is anyone going to say anything at all about JP Enrile? I think not...

By the way, 6M pesos is nowhere near enough to even begin to think about decoding Skype or Blackberry Messenger protocols - GCHQ have trouble with those - so private messages are safe enough, but open bulletin boards and Facebook will be targetted.

I'm willing to wager that the implementation of this Act won't cost the Philippine Treasury even one Peso! The entire cost - and then some - will be met by our good friends, the American tax-payers and given as grant aid. The US, which has set itself up as the world's moral policeman, has teams of agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attached to PNP forces around the country. ICE investigates and arrests those who commit child pornography and human trafficking type offences but they're not interested in investigating any crimes committed by locals, only foreigners - regardless of nationality - who, if caught, are very quickly and quietly deported to the US for trial and sentencing. The new Cybercrime Act gives ICE another legal weapon to detect those.

So that's the money sorted but they're still left with the practicalities of actually implementing the law. That won't be too difficult for web sites that are physically hosted in the Philippines but that really only accounts for a very few - and most of those are owned by the government! So it will be a little difficult, to put it mildly, to force the owner(s) of web sites hosted, say in the UK, to reveal the identity of a poster who transgresses the libel provisions and if they're not living in the country, then what? This won't be such a problem, however, for ICE investigating human-traffickers though since it can call on the bi-lateral agreements the US has with most other (first world) countries.

Apart from the child-protection and human-trafficking aspects - which will continue to be the ICE's purview but only affecting foreigners - the remainder of the new Act might well be a bit of a toothless tiger. But if the government were to block sites that publish articles and comments considered to be in breach of the Law, then that's a whole new ball game and could be considered as e-Martial Law.

[HR][/HR]
Historical Note

The UK was one of the very first countries to introduce computer-related legislation with the passing of the Computer Misuse Act in 1990. It began life the previous year as a "5 Minute Rule Bill" and was introduced by Michael Colville MP, a Conservative back-bencher who'd won a "slot" in the annual ballot. The Bill did not enjoy (Conservative) government support and very nearly didn't get passed. As soon as the Act was passed by Parliament, national responsibility for policing the new Act was given to Scotland Yard's Fraud Squad and a small team consisting of a DS and three DCs and led by DI John Austen. All were experienced officers who'd previously investigated the highly-complex Guinness Fraud case and thus the Computer Crimes Unit was born. They were joined by a civilian researcher-cum-computer programmer Jim Bates who'd just decrypted the infamous "AIDS Disk Trojan" and identified its creator, the American Dr Joseph Popp. (The UK did request Popp's extradition but it was denied as he was found to be psychologically unfit to stand trial.)

I had worked with Jim on the "AIDS Disk" case and was invited to assist as a civilian "expert". By the time the Act came into force, the CCU - with Jim's help - had formalised all the investigative protocols to be used which had to take into account other bits of legislation, most notably PACE - the "Police And Criminal Evidence" Act. The American FBI was also in the process of establishing a similar unit and there was a good deal of cross-fertilisation of ideas between the two forces. We ran a series of three-day training courses at the Police Staff College at Bramshill where attendees came from other UK forces as well as from the US and Commonwealth countries. Although Jim and I did take part in a number of raids around the country (him many more than I and over a longer period of time) the job of investigating the evidence, which we did initially, was given to the Forensic Science Service who used protocols and software devised by him. Some of those specialised programs are still used to this day, I understand.

During the Blair Government, further legislation was passed and the job of investigation passed to the High-Tech Crime Unit, part of the centrally-funded Regional Crime Squad.

I will not bet against that prediction!

I would be delighted if human traffickers were indeed dealt with - but as you say, I suspect it will only be the foreigners. Still, if they nab the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans, it will be a start.

It is the cyber-libel provisions that concern my Pinoy friends, and thus, at one remove, me. I do hope that these are struck out as unconstitutional.

They will only arrest them if there's a provable link with the US. For example, earlier this year Thomas Rhuland, a German, was arrested in Cebu and spirited to the US where he was prosecuted and sentenced as part of the investigation into "Dream Board", a US-hosted site specialising in child porn. He is, I believe, currently a guest of the German government enjoying a five-star lifestyle in one of that country's secure "hotels".

I somehow doubt the libel provisions will be removed or even watered-down. There is too much vested interest in ensuring those provisions remain.

Sadly, I fear you are likely to be right; He Who Must Not Be Named, but who was once a secret policeman, will have told the President to pass it.

The traffickers thrive on young women who are desperate to work abroad so as to send money back to their parents. They are despicable.

In the Philippines, unlike other jurisdictions, libel is a criminal act, not a civil tort. Under existing legislation someone convicted can go to prison for four years. The cybercrime law increases that to 12 years. As a 'crime' the prosecution is paid for by the state whilst the alleged libeller must pay his own costs. The objective of the libel law is to tie-up cases for years and drain the alleged libeller of all resources - money, home, job. It is a law of harassment, not justice, and has never been invoked except by the powerful and the crooked.

Absolutely right and it's for that reason that the libel provisions will remain when the Act finally becomes enforceable. It's a case of the few very rich and powerful families that ultimately rule this country seeking to strengthen their grip on the citizenry.

I suspect though that many cases won't get as far as being listed for trial but will get settled at the mediation hearing in the prosecutor's office where the complainant will agree to settle in exchange for a large sum of money. And remember that the complainant has nothing to prove, he/she simply needs to file charges alleging libel; the entire burden of proof rests with the defendant.

But you may not be in the clear if what you wrote is provably true. There is case law which extends the existing "Estafa" laws - normally used for fraud, bouncing cheques etc., - to cover dignity and serious loss of face and, just as with libel, Estafa is a serious criminal offence.

The crime of "Estafa"....

http://wiki.lawcenter.ph/index.php?title=Estafa

We think of it as "bouncing a cheque", because that is the commonest case of estafa, but it is really "injuring someone by deceit".

(I know someone whose wife has just been convicted of estafa; it was indicated that a payment of
P.250K would "settle the matter"; however, since his wife's fraudulent activities had had nothing to do with him and she had been leading him a merry dance in other respects, he politely indicated that he does not have that sort of money...)

Truth is not a defence against libel. It is whether malice wasintended (In Philippine law).

I think the following would summarize...

If there was malice and it was not true it would be libel
If there was malice and it was true it would be libel

If there was no malice and it was not true it would be libel
If there was no malice and it was true it would NOT be libel

The interpretation of the words in question, would be what the court interprets them to mean and not what the defendant intended them to mean.

I think the defendant would have to prove the statements were true, rather than the prosecution proving they are not true.

I am not sure whether it would be up to the prosecution to show there was malice or for the defendant to show there was no malice.