Congress schedules hearings on cybercrime bills next week

By Erwin Lemuel Oliva INQ7.net

THE PHILIPPINE Congress is scheduled to take up several cybercrime bills in a public hearing bills next week, INQ7.net learned on Thursday.

The congressional committee on information and communications technology said that there are at least four pending measures related to cybercrime to be discussed on May 25.

Congressman Simeon Kintanar, chairman of the ICT committee, is the co-author of a pending cybercrime bill, House Bill 3777 titled
"Cybercrime Act of 2005." Other lawmakers who have filed similar bills are Amado Espino Jr., Nanette Castelo Daza, Eric D. Singson, and Harlin Cast. Abayon.

In 2003, the science and technology committee of the House of Representatives had approved "in principle" the consolidated version of a pending measure on cybercrime.

That consolidated version of separate bills scaled down the functions of a proposed ‘Presidential Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Council’ (PCICC).

Kintanar's cybercrime bill version has renamed the PCICC “Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Council,” with its own secretariat and executive director to be appointed by the President.

Such a council will be funded initially by Office of the President but will next require Congress to appropriate funds for the council.

Bills filed in Congress since the early 1990s have proposed various anti-cybercrime measures. Kintanar’s cybercrime bill now includes certain provisions of a controversial international treaty on cybercrime signed in Budapest last year.

Twenty-six members of the Council of Europe, including Japan, the US, Canada and South Africa signed the treaty, agreeing to put an end to activities such as online child pornography, fraud, and hacking. The treaty also sets guidelines on how countries would police the Internet.

Forty-three member states of the Council of Europe -- including the US, Japan and South Africa, drafted the Budapest cybercrime treaty and opened it to any country that wished to sign it. Civil rights groups and Internet service providers opposed the treaty, however, saying it imposed burdens on providers and failed to include enough public input.

Two years ago, the 15-member European Union also proposed its own separate treaty on cybercrime.

Meanwhile the Philippine cybercrime bill intends to complement the Electronic Commerce Act of 2000 (specifically section 33a and b), after proponents noted that the latter fails to address online crimes cited in the international cybercrime treaty.

According to the bill’s proponents, among the crimes not included in the E-commerce law concern issues of privacy, online child pornography, and fraud. The bill defines cybercrime as using computers or the Internet to propagate a crime.