Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, September 19) — An implementation of “own community standards” in social media was suggested by Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa during the budget hearing of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) on Tuesday.
\”When we say, Facebook wala kaming pakielam sa community standards ninyo, we have our own standards here. Kapag papasok kayo sa Pilipinas, susunod kayo sa batas namin, susunod kayo sa standards namin,” Dela Rosa said.
\”We have to regulate you, kaya nating gawin ‘yan? Kasi lumalabas ngayon sila ‘yung nagko-control sa atin. Maraming bansa ang kinokontrol nila. So as a government we have to regulate them. Kaya ba natin ‘yan technologically?” he asked DICT.
[Translation: When we say, Facebook, we don’t care about your community standards, we have our own standards here. If you’re coming here to the Philippines, you have to follow our laws, you have to follow our own standards. We have to regulate you, can we do that? Because it seemed that they have control over us. They control many countries. So as a government we have to regulate them. Can we do that technologically?]
DICT said that they can do the technical regulation but needed an enabling law that would permit the action.
“First, if we want, in which I agree, if we want to have some regulation when it comes to social media because marami na pong lumalabas na tinatawag na online harms noh, so we need an enabling law for that,” DICT Asec Jeffrey Dy said.
Dy also mentioned that when it comes to cybersecurity, there are cybercrime laws that can shut down a site when it violates a certain provision at first sight.
“However, just in case, I’m not a lawyer, but when I sit with our national security counterparts when it comes to cybersecurity, napapansin namin, ‘yung cybercrime law for example, ‘yung 10179, there was there a provision that if a website is already found to be prima facie noh, violative certain laws or cyber laws, pu-puwede nang by order of the Deparment of Justice i-shut down…” he said, apparently referring to Republic Act No. 10175.
