TXTPower, a consumer advocacy group, on Monday lambasted the proposal in Congress for the National Telecommunications Commission to require the registration of country’s 10 million prepaid cellphone subscribers.

“We will oppose this measure because it is politically-motivated and is one step towards censorship and surveillance of texters and mobile phone users,” said TXTPower spokesperson Anthony Ian Cruz.

TXTPower instead urged Rep. Joseph Santiago and other congressmen to investigate both oligopoly operations of Globe and Smart and the collusion by the NTC with these companies. “Bringing down handset prices and the rates for calls and text messaging are what consumers are long batting for.” “Besides, requiring 10 million subscribers to register their SIM cards will entail huge costs for accounting and data storage. Who will pay for these?” asked Cruz. “We will not pay for an additional centavo just so the government could pretend to act on cellphone theft and especially to give it a mechanism for surveillance.”

He explained that the proposal of Santiago, himself a former NTC commissioner and member of the pro-Estrada Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC), “will ultimately hit citizens who use their mobile phones to criticize rampant graft and corruption just like what Filipinos did against Estrada.”

“While we have nothing to hide, the government does not have a right to even take a step towards knowing who, when, why, and how many times a certain text message or call is sent,” said Cruz.

According to TXTPower, the proposal is “only using as cover the need to curb the rampant crime of mobile phone theft.”

The group said that NTC officials revealed last year that the registration of SIM cards was first proposed in the year 2000 by then-PNP Chief Panfilo Lacson when mobile phone users and texters were actively participating in mass actions for Estrada ouster.

The NTC has recently launched a project on the deactivation of stolen mobile phones. Victims of cellphone theft would only have to report to the police and the NTC the circumstances of the crime, file an affidavit of loss and submit the stolen phone’s IMEI number.

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