PAHAYAG
Dumb and Dangerous: Lacson's Rehashed Scheme for SIM Listing
By Anthony Ian Cruz
TXTPower Spokesperson

WHY LAW enforcers have not solved the recent spate of bombings in Metro Manila and Zamboanga and other criminal and terrorist acts is more a problem of their failure to determine whoever or whatever group is behind it. The police and military are obviously falling all over each other in finding out who are the suspects.

Finding out who are the suspects is the logical first step in crime investigations is a difficult job because felons, thieves, crooks and murderers assume false identities through numerous face IDs and they go around safehouses and dens. In many cases, as what the media endlessly report and through various court testimonies by victims, these criminal elements pay law enforcers themselves to cover up their tracks.

Sometimes, government officials and law enforcers themselves turn out to be at the apex of the criminal syndicates as what we have seen under big-time plunderers Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada who both had the military and police top brass staunchly behind them until close to the end.

If the military and police have a hard time finding out who the suspects are because sometimes the list includes they themselves, how in the world would Sen. Panfilo Lacson's rehashed proposal for mandatory registration of Subscriber Identity Modules (SIM) cards help in confronting crime and terror?

Why would criminal elements fear SIM card registration when they can readily assume false identities anyway, in the same way that they use forged passports and other forms of identification? This is not far-fetched as we have learned from Sen. Panfilo Lacson's master, Joseph Estrada a.k.a. Jose Velarde.

If Sen. Lacson would have his way this time, just over a year since he first proposed SIM card registration when he was still Estrada's supercop, the military and police would be able to control or access a growing database of personal information from about 13 million people who own cellphones.

This is dangerous to the right to privacy of communications and would open the floodgates to massive surveillance and spying operations on cellphone subscribers whose only fault is to own cellphones. This, again, is due to the fact that military and police officials are either too incompetent in solving crimes or are in cahoots with the criminal syndicates or are operating them themselves.

Certain political groups, including both the Administration and Opposition, may use such database to track down the sources of what they claim to be "politically-motivated text messages" and bear down on them the full might of the law. (Under Marcos, the military and police kept dossiers on thousands of Filipinos perceived as enemies by the dictatorship. These dossiers were presented as evidence in kangaroo military courts and as basis for jailing dissidents, critics and oppositionists or a rich resource for all the possible acts of harassment against them and their relatives.)

We in TXTPower will not allow characters like Sen. Lacson who is known as a torturer and spymaster under Marcos and super-cop under Estrada to take away our privacy of communications as well as the possible use of cellphones for exposing government corruption and mobilizing the people to stand up against their likes. This is a solemn vow we make in the name of the millions of people who went to Edsa and other public places during People Power 2.

On a more practical note, how does Sen. Lacson propose to implement such SIM card registration? Will the expense for the registration forms and the growing database be passed on to consumers? Will this result in new fees and new regulations that will hamper the public from availing of cellphone service at a time when most of the country remain without any other affordable means of communications?

Police and military work against crime and terror should protect and further expand civil liberties, not limit them. Unfortunately, the SIM card registration would not pass this simple test.

It is a dumb idea that will make criminals and terrorists laugh all the way to their dens and make the World's Texting Republic a nation of suspects watched eagerly by incompetent and corrupt police and military officials in the mold of Sen. Lacson.

October 21, 2002

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