Cybercrime law not a threat to freedom -Angara

Senator Edgardo Angara stressed in an interview yesterday that media men and ‘netizens’ should not be alarmed amid the passing of the controversial cybercrime prevention law.

Acknowledging media as a powerful conveyor of information, Angara, the principal author of the bill, asked them to come down and tell the people that ‘there is no threat to anyone's freedom right now’.

“I repeat, you, journalists have nothing to worry. You are the most protected species on Earth especially in the Philippines unlike in other countries, they are put into jail while some were even killed in a firing squad,” Angara said.

He also proved wrong the misapprehensions concerning the bill calling it as mere ‘exaggerations’.  “No one has ever been charged for expressing his opinion. That is not covered at all,” he added.

 Recently, violent reactions and protests- pronouncing the bill’s violation of Article III Section 4 of the constitution which states that there “shall be no law passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression or of the press...”- are posted in social networking and other websites,

Firm in his stand that there is no issue of right infringement, he said, “The freedom of speech and of the press does not protect libellous or malicious statements. That is always outside the scope of free speech.”

Angara said that in the Republic Act No. 10175, otherwise known as the “Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012,” there are only three out of 23 articles have been questioned during the reading. One of it was about the ‘cybercrime libel,’ which was proposed by Sen. Vicente Sotto III.

Angara called for the revision of the provision on libel in the Revised Penal Code, saying that the imposition of libel does not cover the web since the time it was crafted, circa 1930, there are still no computers.

According to a Philippine National Statistics Coordination Board (NSCB) paper presented in the 10^th National Convention on Statistics (NCS), the information technology sector creates more than 600,000 jobs in the country forming the 27 percent of the country’s labor force. The senator seeks the adaptation of the law as a course of development in the information sector.

“The cybercrime law would protect a very vital sector of our economy and of our society -- which is the cyber space or the online communication,” the senator said when asked about the significance of passing it. 

“We want to develop information and communication infrastructure in our country because it's going to be useful in running an efficient e-government, it's going to be useful in trading and dealing of goods,” he added.

R.A. No. 10175 was approved as a law last September 12. It includes cyber squatting, cybersex, and child pornography, illegal access to data, identity theft and libel as cybercrime offenses.

“This is the classic call of the Constitution to promote the development for the common good but at the same time balance it against the abuse of human rights.”