Bloggers, students join SC petition vs cybercrime law

MANILA, Philippines – Legislators, political bloggers, students and professors asked the Supreme Court on Monday, Octpber 1, to declare the Cybercrime Prevention Act unconstitutional and stop Malacañang and the Department of Justice (DOJ) from implementing it.

Kabataan partylist Rep Raymond Palatino, Prof Carl Marc Ramota of the University of the Philippines-Manila Department of Social Sciences, Dean Rolando Tolentino of the UP College of Mass Communications, bloggers Katrina Stuart Santiago, Victor Villanueva and representatives from different research and media outfits Tudla Media Productions, Crispin Beltran Research Center, among others, asked the SC to nullify sections of Republic Act 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act which they said are vague and violate the rights to freedom of expression and privacy of communication.

The petitioners said Sections 4(c)4, 5, 6 and 7 — which include online libel as a cybercrime and increase penalties for all crimes in the Revised Penal Code — are ambiguous because they failed to specify the penalties for online libel and distinguish communications made through a “computer system” and “information and communications technology.”

“Because of this vagueness and confusion, this will most definitely give law enforcers unbridled discretion in carrying out the law’s provisions, become an arbitrary flexing of the Government muscle, and produce a chilling effect on legitimate and protected speech,” the petitioners said.

They added that the following provisions of Chapter IV, which deals with the collection and disclosure of data, are unconstitutional:

a. Section 12, which allows real-time collection of traffic data, allegedly violates the right to privacy of communications;

b.  Sections 13, which authorizes the preservation of data, and 17, which allows the destruction of the same, purportedly deprive people their right to due process because they are not provided due notice and the “opportunity to be heard as to why [their] computer data is being order preserved” or destroyed;”

c. Section 15, which allows the search, seizure and examination of computer data purportedly violates the constitutional right against unreasonable search and seizure;

d. Section 19, which gives the DOJ the power to “issue an order to restrict or block access” to computer data that are “prima facie found to be in violation of the provisions of this Act,” allegedly violates the freedom of expression and speech;

The petitioners sought a temporary restraining order from the Court. They said that once the law, which was signed by President Benigno Aquino III on September 12, takes effect on Wednesday, October 3, they can be held criminally liable for the articles they have posted online.

This is the 6th petition to be filed against the Cybercrime Prevention Act.

Lawyers Harry Roque, Jose Jesus Disini, businessmen Louis Biraogo, partylist group Alab ng Mamamahayag and Sen. Teofisto Guingona III previously filed similar petitions. – Rappler.com