The High Courts have spoken and the Anti-cybercrime Law in the Philippines is suspended. In response to 15 petitions, 14 justices unanimously voted to issue a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to stop the implementation of Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which carries the controversial “online libel” amendment. The threat to curtail Internet freedom in the country faced a 120-day suspension. Thereafter, the High Courts will have to make a decision and will hold oral arguments to abide by the due process. This is a sweet victory for millions in opposition.

A day before the law took effect on October 2^nd, the Filipino rallied not on the streets but in the platform they might not be able to enjoy full liberty of sooner or later—social media itself. Hashtags like #notoanticybercrimelaw, #freedom and #virtualmartiallaw surfaced and became trending topics worldwide for days. Being the most discussed topic in the Philippine internet scene, the passing of the law summoned varieties of opinions and political mayhem.

Cut and Paste Lawmaking

My heart skipped in pride and joy when I read how the Philippine economy is making a pleasantly surprising surge not only in Asia but globally. The CNN captured key drivers of growth. Barely three months after the good news, the country is again a subject of a banner headline, but this time for a wrong reason. A Forbes.com article noted that Philippines passed a law that made SOPA look reasonable. I had the opportunity to write about SOPA and how the big names demonstrated their dismay and disagreement of the bill. If Philippines’ cybercrime law is a variant of SOPA, then it is a second-rate, poorly and carelessly written version. Another local expert noted that the law was modeled after the Budapest Convention in Cybercrime. But again, it fades against comparison.

There is without a doubt a need to pass a law that can fairly control cybercrimes, since eliminating these is next to impossible. However, legislators should come up with better researches and provisions. To think, this Anti-cybercrime law in the Philippines is 11 years in the making.

The Insertion of Online Libel

According to the solon who initially drafted the law, it will enable to claws of the authorities to hunt down people behind internet pornography, hacking and spamming. It sounded well-intentioned. But, some provisions are somewhat vague and inherently flawed. A good example is giving the government the right to access Skype videos and chats without warrants should be it deemed necessary for the case. But what truly angered the people is the insertion of the “online libel”—wherein anyone who likes, comments, shares and tweets defamatory posts in social media will face up to 12 years in prison. This is by far the most outrageous item in the already carelessly-crafted law. There was a joke that circulated that looks at 3 people behind bars: 1 because of rape, 1 because of posting offensive post and the other liked the second person’s post. Apparently among them, the person who was accused of rape will be jailed for 5 to 10 years and the other Anti-cybercrime law offenders will face longer sentence. This leaves the other two to say: “I should have raped someone instead of posting in Facebook”.

The legislator responsible for incorporating online libel in the Anti-cybercrime law was a self-proclaimed victim of online bullying. This was after he plagiarized a blog of Sarah Pope and harvested harsh comments from people around the country and the author’s followers. His name and witty but insulting hashtags, trended on Twitter and Facebook for a number of days. The media became critical about his act. Having said this, I am no longer surprised he pushed for online libel’s inclusion. Personal agenda? Apparently.

Amidst the uproar, hacktivists pinned down various governmental websites including the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Department of Health (DOH) and many others. They say that the 120-day suspension made them toothless versus these intruders. Well, my take is: how can the implementing bodies execute the law if they could not even safeguard their perimeter? Are their IT guys good enough to hold up the system to prevent hacking? Guess, not.

What this cybercrime law circus taught us as a nation is that we have a great disconnect to the elected government officials which should fundamentally represent us. Laws like this one are not about protecting the interest of the people, these are about controlling them and stealing their fundamental and basic rights to freedom. If I post something in Facebook against a government policy or expresses disappointment, I could easily find my way to the prison. If this will be the case, it is very scary to think of what comes next.