By Dennis D. Estopace & Oliver Samson
Conclusion
FREQUENCY is a powerful product.
Four years from now, more than half of the world’s 7 billion people today would be connected
by frequency.
According to Aurora A. Rubio of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), these people would exchange 50 trillion gigabytes of data by 2020.
More than 25 million applications would be used, Rubio, head of the ITU Area Office for Southeast Asia, said during a conference in September.
Falling within the cracks are cybercriminals and online predators.
“The rapid development of information technology [IT] opens up many opportunities, but also entails several potential risks for users, especially for children,” Do Hai Anh of the Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) said during the conference on child online protection (COP).
According to Hai Anh, the number of Vietnamese children using the Internet is “quite large”.
“They are facing a lot of dangers, abuse [and] risks from this environment, such as personal information accidentally or intentionally disclosed that [an] abuser could take advantage,” said Hai Anh, deputy director of the Vietnam MIC Information Security Verification Center.
It is no different in the Philippines.
DOJ cases
A report by the Philippines’s Department of Justice Office on Cybercrime (DOJ-OOC) noted two significant cases involving child exploitation online. One of these involves what the DOJ-OOC calls as “sextortion.”
“Sextortion is a form of sexual exploitation that employs nonphysical forms of coercion to extort money from the victim in exchange of the nonposting of the victim’s sexual video online,” the DOJ-OOC 2015-2016 report said.
In 2013 the Philippines was ranked as the top country with the highest recorded cases of sextortion.
A year later, cooperation by the Philippine National Police (PNP) and Interpol led to the arrest of 57 and the seizure of more than 200 digital evidence from 15 locations.
Those arrested were part of a group operating more or less 9,000 suspected accounts related to sextortion activities worldwide, the DOJ-OOC report said. Of this number, 2,800 were traced to be from the Philippines.
Another case, also in 2014, concerns a criminal who the United States Homeland Security Investigations (USHSI) Manila Attaché said produces child pornography online while in the Philippines.
The DOJ-OOC said the criminal was identified based from results of computer forensic examination conducted by the USHSI in connection to an arrest of an online sexual predator in the US.
“Several chats and electronic payments were revealed to be in relation to child-pornography activities of the subject in the Philippines,” the DOJ-OOC report said.
The police was able to catch the suspect “in flagrante delicto, in a room with four other female individuals who were all later confirmed to be of minor age, ranging from ages 9 to 14, in front of a laptop computer negotiating the price and cyber sexual shows they would perform.”
The DOJ-OOC said the suspect was arrested and charged for violations of three laws, as well as Article 201 of the Revised Penal Code.
The Inter-agency Council Against Child Pornography (ICACP) has recorded an increase in child-pornography cases reported in centers of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).
Amelia Gowa, an independent cyber-security policy analyst specializing in child online-protection issues, said during the same conference the condition of children online in Vietnam and the Philippines are very similar across Asia.
Social media has become the new school yard for bullies, Gowa said, citing cases of cyber bullying as cited by those surveyed in November 2015.
She added that teens surveyed have said cruel behavior takes place on Twitter (23.8 percent), Myspace (17.7 percent) and Instant Messenger (15.2 percent). A majority experienced cyber bullying on Facebook (92.6 percent).
In her presentation during the conference on COP, DSWD mid-level official Rosalie Dagulo said from 36 in 2011, the cases reported increased to 121 by 2014.
“We receive an average report of one to three incidents in a week, which we forward to the PNP or the NBI [National Bureau of Investigation] for surveillance or investigation,” Dagulo said.
Response
DATA from the Philippine Chamber of Telecommunications Operators (PCTO) said the basic challenge to addressing such issue is in the law itself.
Telecommunication companies comply and cooperate with law-enforcement agencies to preserve evidence but release the information only upon a court order, PCTO President Enrico de los Reyes said in his presentation during the conference.
De los Reyes said the law on antichild pornography and its implementing rules and regulation (IRR) requires telcos to report to the PNP or NBI within seven days from discovery that child pornography is being committed using its servers.
Aside from that, telcos are also required to preserve evidence for purposes of investigation or prosecution and, upon request, furnish proper authorities of the particulars of users who gained or attempted to gain access to sites that contains any form of child pornography.
Telcos are also mandated by law to install available technology, program or software to ensure that access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography will be blocked or filtered, de los Reyes said.
However, he said there is a provision in Republic Act (RA) 9775 that ties the hands of a telco.
Section 9 of RA 9775, or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009, provides that “Nothing in this section may be construed to require an ISP to engage in the monitoring of any user, subscriber or customer, or the content of any communication of any such person,” de los Reyes said.
He explained that section effectively nullifies the telco’s obligation to block and filter a site. In addition, filtering software is expensive and ineffective, censorship and slows down the Internet, de los Reyes said.
Initiatives
RUBIO has noted the Philippines does not lack legal powers in its fight for child online protection.
Aside from RA 9775, the Philippines is also a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Children (CRC), the optional protocol to the CRC on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, the International Labor Organization Worst Form of Child Labor protocol and the trafficking protocol.
Rubio also noted the Philippines has a national strategic framework for plan development for children (2000 to 2025) and National Plan of Action (2011 to 2016), as well as a comprehensive plan on child protection (2012 to 2016).
According to Angel Redoble, founding president of the Philippine Institute of Cyber Security Professionals (PICSPro), it also boils down to the individual and the child himself or herself.
“Never talk to strangers online,” Redoble told the BusinessMirror. “Never access a malicious site.” He added that the social welfare should come in in cases where kids are forced by their parents to strip their cloths in front of camera.
The government should also provide an alternative livelihood to victims of child pornography.
Parents should also undergo awareness workshops on securing their children from online threats, he noted. “The workshops, which should be sustainable and inclusive, can be conducted down to the barangays.”
For Edgar Marshall M. Brinas of the Department of Education, there is a need to make parents, teachers and students aware of the rights and current situation to promote child online protection.
According to Brinas, DepEd Education Program Supervisor, the DepEd has ordered all elementary and secondary schools to create child protection committees to ensure that cases of child abuse are monitored closely at school level.
These committees, he said, adheres to the goal of effective implementation of a zero tolerance policy for any act of child abuse, exploitation, violence, discrimination, bullying and other forms of abuse.