‘The state is not an angel’

THUS remarked a visibly alarmed Roberto “Obet” Verzola when I interviewed him a couple of years ago about the implications on certain freedoms, particularly the right to privacy, of proposals to employ new information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the government’s anti-terrorism campaign.

Back then, drafts of proposed anti-terrorism and cybercrime bills in both Houses of Congress were calling for measures as electronic eavesdropping and requiring Internet service providers (ISPs) to keep a six-month record of electronic mails. The intelligence community was also lobbying Congress to allow judges to authorize the use of Carnivore-type programs to read the content of emails and trace certain addresses as part of intelligence gathering. The PNP leadership meanwhile wanted the old wiretapping law amended to adapt to modern times.

Acknowledged to have developed the first microcomputer in the country, Verzola is a pioneer in the local computer industry but who has since become a critic of technology. “I will really take the side of privacy,” he said in reaction to government’s response to terrorism as it tended to sacrifice people’s constitutional rights more in the name of greater security. He also issued a reminder that the government has used similar measures for “evil purposes” in the past, pointing as well to its uncanny link to criminality.

His observations came to mind amid the start of congressional hearings this week to finally flesh out an anti-terrorism law and the Arroyo government’s renewed vigor to institutionalize a national ID system.

Some of the 15 proposed bills are a rehash of those filed in the 12th Congress, authored by the likes of Rep. Imee Marcos, the eldest daughter of the deposed strongman Ferdinand Marcos, and top police officer turned senator Panfilo Lacson, head of the dreaded Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) during the brief term of ousted president Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada. Lacson’s is itself a reworking of an old bill authored by Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, defense chief of the late Marcos and chief architect of martial law.

A provision in at least one of the re-filed bills (HB 1925 authored by Rep. Robert Ace Barbers) authorizes the government to conduct electronic surveillance allowing it to tap, monitor or intercept the Internet, email, voice mail, even text messages of any person suspected of being a member of a terrorist organization.

The said pieces of legislation had been deemed draconian by both local and foreign human rights monitors which felt that the provisions encroach on the people’s right to privacy, freedom of expression, and communication. While the approved draft of the consolidated bill in the Lower House eventually shed off its close resemblance to the US Patriot Act, it was never passed during the 12th Congress.

As with the national ID initiative, a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey even finds that 60 percent — three out of five — of Filipinos (although that is down by six percent from the SWS survey in December 2002) support the idea as a means to help combat terrorism. About half of those surveyed also expressed confidence that the government can be trusted to protect the privacy of personal information to be stored in the ID card.

As evidenced by Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s recent executive order, government is hell-bent on pushing for a national ID system — even via a unified multi-purpose ID system for government employees initially — as it will enable citizens “to interact more closely and more efficiently with government as well as private institutions.”

Are the likes of Obet Verzola merely being paranoid then, as government, articulated by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, is wont to reject fears that the national ID system is espousing a surveillance society?

That would however imply that the Supreme Court was as much in a state of paranoia when it declared Administrative Order No. 308 issued by then Pres. Fidel V. Ramos in 1996 as unconstitutional for its implications on the citizens’ right to be left alone. Penning the decision, Justice Reynato Puno alerted the public to the danger posed by the ability of a sophisticated data center to generate a comprehensive cradle-to-grave dossier on an individual.

Were it not for the Arroyo government’s continued adherence to the US-declared war on terror, Bunye’s assurance would have been more palatable. Regrettably, there exists a new “security” paradigm within whose context governments around the world are adopting measures like the national ID. All these, the non-profit civil liberties monitoring group Statewatch says, feed into an emerging “global registration and surveillance infrastructure (that is) being used to roll back freedom and increase police powers in order to exercise increasing control over individuals and populations.”

In a recent study, “The Emergence of a Global Infrastructure for Mass Registration and Surveillance,” Statewatch tries to alert the public to take stock of the road that their governments are leading them down with new registration and surveillance measures. It should be instructive in explaining what Bunye dismisses as plain “paranoia.”