In the next few months, Filipinos owning a prepaid SIM card are required to register themselves before authorities or else, risk having their lines cut off.
On February 2, 2022, the Congress ratified the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) Card Registration Act. Under this proposed law, all Filipinos with active prepaid SIM cards and social media accounts are required to register themselves to a soon-to-be specified government institution. Currently, concerned agencies like the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), among others, are in the process of creating the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for this proposed law.
By requiring prepaid SIM card users to be logged, the Philippines would be at par with other Asian neighbors like Singapore and Hong Kong, Australia, and a bunch of European countries.
However, with the version of the law that had been passed by Congress, there are more than a few clauses in it that have vague descriptors, a problem that could be remedied by the actual IRR — should this bill be officially passed into law.
Before everything else, let’s talk about how this SIM Registration bill works first.
The Dos and Don’ts (a.k.a TL;DR of the new law)
In the ratified version of this act, there are guidelines on how one could acquire, activate, and maintain/use a SIM card.
According to the SIM Card Registration Act (also known from this point as the SCRA), new subscribers should get a hand of a prepaid SIM card only from accredited third-part resellers. They are also required to present identification cards/documents when purchasing SIM cards. Minors would also have to be accompanied by a legal guardian when buying a prepaid SIM. Aliens/foreigners are also allowed to buy, but with pertinent Immigration documents attached to their registration (depending on the length of their stay in the country. Forms with specific control numbers will be given out once the law becomes enforced.
The user is given 30 days to file their registration once the law takes into effect. Buying from unauthorized stores is also punishable.
Telecom companies would have to pinpoint stores which would be authorized by them to sell such items. Meaning, the would-be unaccredited sellers would have their SIM cards pulled out by the company itself.
Meanwhile, for existing subscribers, they are given 180 days (or about six months) to comply. If they are not able to, the prepaid SIM card that they are currently using would be deactivated.
In case of loss or theft, the person is only given 72 hours to deregister and decommission the SIM card and number. In case of errors in name or any other detail, the same period is also given for them to update their information.
In case of a cyber attack in the number data base, the authorities are required to report to the DICT within 24 hours of detection.
However, apart from SIM cards, the law is also requiring social media users to register using their real name and number to the socmed providers. It is seen as a concrete response to the growing network of disinformation trolls, especially during this crucial period in the election campaign season.
There are a few more details from this law that you can read in the full copy of the document here.
The questions
With the imposition of such provisions on social media registration, the SCRA has opened up a debate on many things. Therefore, creating a number of questions that need to be answered before the general public. Here are some of those.
What constitutes a social media platform?
First and foremost, what makes a social media platform under this law? While at the top of the mind are popular sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, there are aplenty of platforms that allow users to interact with one another.
Take YouTube for example, it is a video-hosting platform by design, but also allows the content creators and their community of fans to interact with one another. Now, would that be considered as social media?
Therefore, a deeper probe of the internet’s landscape should be made before specifying what are the sites that are considered to be social media platforms.
What does it take to be considered one with a ‘fictitious identity?’
The most intriguing, and rather controversial, part of this bill is primarily the clause that would require social media users to register using their real name and phone number when creating a new account.
A fine of up to Php 200,000 and even a jail time of six years could be given if the user registers an account using a fictitious identity. Existing users, however, were not mentioned in the said provision. The term fictitious identity was also not throughly and outwardly explained, thus leaving that task to the IRR.
If one would go to social media right now, legitimate persons use nicknames or deliberate misspellings for harder search-engine optimization for those who’d like to stalk them. Likewise, those who use aliases or alternate names for their accounts to keep themselves private are also pretty much ubiquitous.
People who identify themselves as transgender/transsexual also opt to use another name that is different from what they have on their legal documents, yet they are also legitimate individuals.
Apart from that, there has also been a rise in fan-oriented/fanbase accounts, especially on Twitter, in recent years — still, a lot of those are legitimate if one would be basing on the language and behavior of such accounts. Of course, celebrities who may go by a specific screen name to get recognized easily, may also use that on social media.
Also, there are certain platforms which does not have the same functionalities as let’s say Facebook Pages, thus requiring users to create a new account should they need to use that for other purposes (e.g. business and other interests). It is rather not acceptable to merge them, given the variety in the purpose.
On the other side of the spectrum of course are trolls — which this act primarily (as it should) counteracts — that primarlily use anonymity to their advantage. Still, even through that veil, one can immediately set these ‘trolls’ apart from legitimate users by judging and monitoring their inauthentic and abusive behavior.
Thus, there should be an arbitrary definition first of what a fictitious identity under this law really means.
After deciding on that, the next questions would be: who are specifically the people who could opt to take exempt from it, especially given the broad and vague wording in the law itself. Also, what effect would this clause have on already existing users prior to the law’s enforcement? And the most important thing: how would this clause not step on everyone’s right to privacy and anonymity?
Would they allow users to change the name afterwards and use it for other interests, such as hobbies and business?
Granted that a person would register themselves using their real names, there are settings on these platforms that would enable them to change names thereafter. Thus, making such registration obsolete if safeguards and specifications are not churned out.
Circumstances where name changes to such account should also be specified, especially if the purpose of such is for business, interests/hobbies, among others. Here, of course, there should be guidelines that would be followed. One could be the recognition of the owner that they will continue to own the account despite the change and two, that the account would remain handled by them. Paperworks should not be required here, as that would stifle peoples’ freedom to free speech. So, a good measure here is to actually just let the number verification do its work.
If there’s anything not to be allowed and unacceptable in terms of drastic name changes to accounts, though, is when an account is not just renamed, but also repurposed to be sold to certain individuals or groups. This issue has become more prevalent over the years as proven by this report by Jacque Manabat of ABS-CBN News.
What is considered to be a ‘fake news,‘ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘trolling,’ under this law?
In the era of rampant harrasment towards legitimate media establishments and sources, the term fake news has become quite overused by detractors. Oftentimes, it is even used by those on the comments section when the media entity does not subscribe to their belief, hence not granting that person’s ‘confimation bias.’
What’s warying here is that the term fake news, along with disinformation and trolling, are so easily thrown against people without even knowledge as to when it is acceptable to actually do so. Take troll for example. Rather than saying a critic or basher, there are people who immediately declare those people as trolls, no matter what the intent and the persona, so as long as these accounts speak about anything they (the account’s owner) perceive as negative against them. The same can be somehow true for some real-world instances.
Furthermore, not having the definition decided upon from the get-go may also pose a serious risk of having the law weaponized against legitimate sources in the future, especially during instances when a certain group or personality does not subscribe to them and the truth they present. Therefore, an arbitrary meaning to these terms under SCRA should also be incorporated.
Would social media platforms allow phone numbers to be used for more than once, in respect to this new law? Would the government allow people to register their numbers on plaforms more than once?
Going back to the SIM-social media tie up, another question is would these social platforms allow users to authenticate and associate their phone number more than once, given that they have multiple accounts already operated? And if they do, at what point would it be capped?
Currently, the likes of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram only allow users to authenticate their numbers once. But unlike FB, Twitter does not have the function similar to a page. Thus, if there are budding businesses, they would have to be registered as separate accounts — a problem that has also been mentioned earlier.
Should these platforms permit Philippine users to use their phone numbers more than once, the maximum number of accounts linked to such number must be specified (e.g. 2, 3, or more), that is if the gov’t would allow and these socmed platforms adhere to that idea.
How many SIM cards and social media accounts in each platform can individuals have?
Aside from vaguely-defined terms, there is another missing piece in the puzzle that needs to be solved: how many SIM cards can each person possibly purchase, as well as the number of social media accounts they can make and have at one time?
For the first part, on SIM cards, it should be agreed upon first that there must be a cap to how much can one handle at the same time. 2, 3, or 10 even, no matter what numerical value, but there must and should be a limit. That way, there is a clear regulatory measure versus would be-scammers and that would cripple their ability to scam via text messages.
But putting a cap on the number of social media accounts per individual, is something that should not be done and supported. Because even if the acquisition of SIM cards is the only one going to be heaviliy scrutinized, there should be an effect to abusive social media accounts, especially that on their own, platforms also enforce rules versus such behaviors. Therefore, once this type of social media users get booted out of the platforms, it would be hard for them to return using the number they currently have (at least in the status quo). It would also be hard for them to also replace that or acquire another SIM card, chiefly with all the paperworks involved.
With the rise of VPN, would this move be sufficient in fight vs. disinformation?
Perhaps, the most-challenging part in the implementation of this law on the social media side of it are the virtual private networks or commonly known as VPNs. To those unfamiliar, a VPN is primarily used to remain undetectable in certain parts of the world when connecting to the internet. It allows the user to overcome any ban on certain apps/sites in certain territories. For example, one would like to use Google mail services in regions where Google is banned, then VPN would definitely be handy to continue connecting to their peers on Gmail.
Now, the challenge in here is how would they be able to keep track of these users? If ever this law comes into effect, users of questionable nature can just switch on that VPN and be able to circumvent whatever rules the Philippines might set. Thus, it is still not a given that this law would actually be effective to combat disinformation.
In conclusion
Stepping up the country’s regulatory measures against illegal deeds like scam, phishing, among others, is something laudable. On one hand, the prepaid SIM card registration is actually a step to the right direction, especially if the main goal is to prevent these illegal deeds from comtinuing. On the other, though, the government must also assure the public that such measures would not result to issues like wiretapping, espionage, and even text blasts out of nowhere (unless the likes of NDRRMC during times of calamities). In the spirit of fairness, they have already said that the number database would only be used for record-keeping puposes.
However, on the side of social media registration, there’s surely a lot to be studied first before coming up with the rules. These must be cautious enough to not make a lot of legitimate users banish on platforms and result to the curtailment of freedoms that a lot of users currently enjoy on social media. Furthermore, it should be thoroughly discussed with actual stakeholders from all generations and walks of life. That would greatly help map out what the digital world in social media truly looks like, sans the actual trolls. Therefore, resulting to effective mechanisms that will really combat and eradicate those unwanted beasts from the space.
For now, people must remain vigilant and watch out for what these new measures could bring to the table. Whether it would be able to specifically target actual trolls and scammers, or by design, instead affect more normal and legitimate users, that is something that remains to be seen and questioned further when needed.