After so many failed attempts to have the recently passed Anti-Cybercrime law be reviewed, some of our fellow countrymen just had enough of the crap and decided to take matters into their own hands by hacking multiple government websites and placing their banner on it. As the saying goes, “Action speaks louder than wordsâ€.
A few weeks ago, we posted an article about the Republic Act No. 10175 or the Anti-Cybercrime Law and some of the things that you can and cannot do because of it. Since this bill was turned in to a law, there were a group of people who urges the government to have the law revisited because it limits/diminishes our online freedom of speech.
This group of individuals have tried voicing out their concerns to the government peacefully but to no avail. As a result, some of this people have resorted to hacking several government sites and posting their banners which conveys their disappointment about the said law and their request to have it reviewed.
The words written on the hackers’ banner are basically the exact same words that most Filipino online freedom fighters have been saying all this time but seemed to have fallen on the government’s deaf ears. And just to add a bit more emphasis to their sentiments, the group also added a fitting background song “Freedom†from the band Rage Against the Machine. Here’s a copy of that message:
The Philippine Government has just passed a bill that effectively ends the Freedom of Expression in the Philippines.
The Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 is the most notorious act ever witnessed in the cyber-history of the Philippines, and the language of the bill is cunningly designed to make you think it only applies to individuals who are deep in cyber-technology and doesn’t apply to everyone, but some part of the bill basically says it can imprison anyone who commits libel either by written messages, comments, blogs, or posts in sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or any other comment-spaces of other social media in the Internet.
New technologies give us new opportunities to connect with a lot of people not only in this country but all over the world. They can also provide us with a medium through which our political, public and even private views can have an immediate and direct impact on individuals, communities and even countries. It is just so disappointing that our government, in adopting our 80-year-old antiquated libel laws to the Cybercrime Law, again seems to have retarded our march with the rest of the world with respect to giving full force to the people’s freedom of expression.
We ask for a revision of the said bill for the betterment of the Filipino denizens.
Protect our Right to Freedom of Expression!
As of the time of writing there are already seven government websites which have been hacked by a team called Anonymous Philippines. Here’s the list of those sites:
1. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines)
2. Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System
3. American Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines
4. Philippine Anti-piracy Team
5. DENR Region 3
6. Department of Health: Smoke-Free Philippines
7. Institute for Development and Econometric Analysis
If this action still doesn’t get the attention of the government to revisit the law, I honestly don’t know what will. However, in my opinion, even if the government did heed the need to revisit the law, it’s still saddening to know that it has to go this far before the thoughts of a group of concerned citizens could be heard let alone be understood.
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