Population Control 14: Lessons from the Cybercrime Law

The Cybercrime Prevention Act or RA 10175 has jolted millions of netizens in the Philippines and abroad that the government will not hesitate in throwing its heavy intrusive hand in penalizing people, directly or indirectly, who might become too critical of its intrusiveness and corruption.

The law in short, has shown people that more or BIG government is wrong. If people ask the government to provide and subsidize more, to tax and regulate more, then people should also expect the government to intervene and intrude more, to regulate and prohibit more. See  Web and the State: Cybercrime Law and Liberty.

So I thought before that the Reproductive Health (RH) bill will become a law soon as too many people want more government. They even expect the purchase and distribution of condoms, pills and other contraceptives to be done by the government, financed by taxes. After the cybercrime law, I think more people have become more suspicious of asking the government to become even bigger, so public support for the RH bill  might have dwindled.

I am against the RH bill for four reasons.

One, it contributes more to making an already big government becomes even bigger. Condoms and pills lang, gobyerno pa?

Two, many services and provisions in the bill can be done by civil society and concerned citizens with no need for additional state coercion.

Three, people are assets, not liabilities. Using money coercively confiscated from the people's pockets (aka taxes) to finance government population control is not wise.

Four, even without an RH law, the DOH is already spending big for RH services. In its proposed 2013 budget alone, the DOH will spend  P2.54 billion on various RH services, P539 million  of which are for various family planning supplies like pills and DMPA injectibles.

See: Health Spending 6: DOH's Proposed 2013 Budget.

If public sympathy towards government population control will wean someday, Congress can simply disapprove budget requests by the DOH for more contraceptives, no need for prolonged public debates to amend an existing law.

We need less laws. Less government intervention especially via legislation. Almost all of our laws have no sunset provision or period of self destruction, meaning they are laws forever, until they are explicitly abolished or drastically revised. There is no Gawad Kalinga bill, or Books for the Barrios bill, or Solidarity During Flooding bill, and yet various humanitarian work are accomplished with zero legislation, zero coercion, zero taxation involved. RH services can be done without legislation as the DOH itself has been doing it many year

If the goal of the RH advocates is to make certain FP supplies, maternity facilities become available nationwide, the DOH can do that and has been doing that for several years now, though not in ample amount yet.

There are certain provisions of the RH bill that simply imposes coercion and dictation. LIke coercing ALL OB professionals to provide 48 hours per year of pro-bono services to poor preggy women, that they need to get such certification, another bureaucratic procedure, from the government each other otherwise they can be penalized. As if OB professionals here are not doing such services, like joining medical missions, giving "Thank You" services to really poor mothers in certain cases, and so on. Also, the coercion requiring ALL students from Grade 5 to High School, six years total, to take RH subjects otherwise they cannot graduate, and so on.

The RH bill is not a law yet, but like the Cybercrime bill, once it's near completion to become a law, we can expect all sorts of insertions or "singit" and riders later on by the legislators. Most Filipinos do not really trust those Senators and Congressmen, so we give them again another opportunity to make insertions up to the bicameral level. Once it becomes a law, another round of opposition as some groups will go to the Supreme Court to ask for its nullification as being "unconstitutional", the way that many groups have done with regards to this cybercrime law.

One friend in facebook posted this report from yahoo news last October 05 in his fb status. I commented that this article means government sponsored population control leads to fewer abortions. Yes, true. And it also leads to less births, less babies, less future workers and entrepreneurs.

My friend is has one daughter, typical middle class family. I added that his household has a yaya or helper, plus driver. My bet is that the household workers did not come from 1 or 3 children households, but from 4 or more children households. Which proves that people are assets, not liabilities.

Government using taxpayers money to control population is wrong. Let people, the RH advocates especially, buy their own condoms and pills and give these for free to the poor. This way, they can walk the talk and whatever inefficiencies in their advocacy later on will have limited damage to the rest of society. Compare that to a situation where there is institutionalized government population control policy via an RH law that has no sunset provision. The outflow of money and resources even from those who never supported the policy in the first place towards that program will be a perennial expenditure item.
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See also:
Fat-Free Econ 19: Population Decontrol, Not RH Bill, August 08, 2012
Population Control 10: Anger and Coercion in Pushing RH Bill, August 10, 2012
Population Control 11: Church Coercion vs. State Coercion, August 12, 2012
Population Control 12: RH Bill will Become a Law, August 17, 2012
Population Control 13: Excess People are Liabilities kuno, August 25, 2012

Web and the State 1: Cybercrime Law and Liberty

I got into a few friendly exchanges and debates on the new law, RA 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act, signed into a law only last month. There are three threads here, about 12 pages long including this image below, so grab your fave snacky, cheers.

Thread 1, October 01 to 02:

Anthony: Cybercrime Law: I've reconsidered the issue and now agree with Harry Harry Santos that there's cause for concern. Initially I thought that the law's passing wouldn't matter since it would be difficult to implement.

However, as the latest PNP Facebook fiasco shows, actual implementation isn't the danger. The real danger is that it can be used to intimidate.

Nonoy Oplas makes the point that the law does contain some useful points but when bad provisions are inserted, I'd say that it makes the whole thing more dangerous.
http://www.rappler.com/nation/13410-pnp-warns-against-using-foul-word-vs-officers-online

Nonoy Oplas I think I've posted several libelous sentences in my blog alone, especially against the climate alarmists, party list groups, RH supporters, foreign aid establishment, etc.. I will wait that someone will sue me for libel. Otherwise, I think the fear and alarm over this law is much larger than the actual danger itself, pretty much like climate alarmism.

Btway Anthony, what if someone will hack your company website, put statements like "Shoot and kill libertarians, these are cold blooded individualist people" and put your face there, other people they think are libertarians. They do this simply because they don't like your ideas, or they don't like your face, or they are envious of your successful business, whatever reason. You correct the problem, they do it over and over again.

My bet is that if you have the resources and time and you can trace the perpetrators, you will sue these people using this law and put them to jail and publicize that you have put someone to jail because of repeated personal attacks on you on the web.

Paul The alarm over RA10175 is similar to climate alarmism, except that the latter has no basis, and the former actually has provisions that could be used by the political elite to intimidate enemies. Your view of the law will also depend on if you think libel and slander should be considered crimes at all.

I don't think RA10175 did anything to further affirm the ownership of servers or databases, the existence of which is not merely 'cyber,' and thus ought to be covered by existing laws against property violations.

And punishing spam is punishing a non-violation of property. We might as well imprison people who hand us brochures at the malls; these are unsolicited offers after all.

Fat Free Econ 25: Property Rights and the Cybercrime Prevention Law

* This is my article yesterday in TV5's news portal,
http://www.interaksyon.com/business/44378/fat-free-economics-property-rights-and-the-cybercrime-prevention-law
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Property rights by individuals, households, corporations, government and NGOs, is the cornerstone of securing a peaceful and orderly society. A person’s house, car, computer, song, invention is his and his alone. He can use and keep them, or sell, donate, or destroy them. Having private property ownership means having exclusive use and disposition of a particular property, both physical and non-physical or intellectual property.


In the absence of clear private property rights protection, bullies, gangsters and envious people can simply use, grab or steal someone else’s car, cell phone, computer, shoes and so on, and say that those are also their property.  And society can easily degenerate into chaos and disorder as bullies can be violent in grabbing and stealing other people’s property while the real owners can also be violent too in protecting their hard-earned assets.

That is why one important function of government or the state is to promulgate the rule of law, the law on private property ownership and control, and to penalize those who will steal or destroy legally owned properties.

The Cybercime Prevention Act of 2012 or Republic Act No. 10175 - excluding a few highly questionable and dangerous sections - is a good law because it promotes and protects private property ownership of online, intellectual property materials.  It seeks to prevent theft, defamation and/or destruction of a citizen’s online properties (See the full text of Republic Act No. 10175 at the Official Gazette).

Companies, individuals, media, NGOs, other entities use portals or websites, blogs, accounts in YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media, to advertise themselves and their products and services, or report stories, data and opinions. If these cyber properties are altered, defaced, defamed or even shut down, that is tantamount to destruction of their private property rights and should be considered a crime or a civil liability.

As a blogger and regular contributor to Interaksyon.com, I will not be happy if my blog, articles, or my personal accounts in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Gmail and Yahoo, are altered, hacked or simply shut down by other people. If a person has the resources to track down the perpetrators of such destruction of private properties and to bring them to court, that person would be happy to have a law as basis for hailing those cyber criminals to court, to make them accountable and punish them for their actions.

In effect, by protecting private property rights, by preventing or minimizing cyber crimes via penalties, the law is expanding individual freedom, especially the freedom of self expression and social networking.

There are certain sections of the law, however, that can be abused by the government and in the process stifle if not kill freedom of expression. Such provisions were pointed out by Atty. Mel Sta. Maria in his earlier papers here in Interaksyon.com.

For example, if person A would post in his Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or other social network comments that are considered defamatory or libelous by a person B, then that constitutes a cybercrime. Now if person C would simply “like” or share or forward such comments to their network of friends, then that is considered as “aiding or abetting” a criminal, and hence a punishable offense, according to Sta. Maria.

Another provision that has attracted a howl of protest is the so-called “take down clause,” allows the Department of Justice to restrict or block access to computer data if it violates the provisions of the law.

This is dangerous because only the DOJ has the sole power to judge a comment in Facebook or Twitter, or a blog post or comment, as libelous or defamatory or criminal. The DOJ has unilateral action and power to take down cyber content, say a blog post or the entire blog and website. There is no remedial provision in the law that the affected individuals or parties can stop the DOJ from restricting or blocking a website or blog content and data. And this can be abused by the government to stifle individual self expression.

There are two ways to correct or remedy these anomalous provisions of the new law. One is through the implementing rules and regulations, which have yet to be crafted. The other is to enact another law amending RA 10175 and remove the above-mentioned questionable provisions.

It is possible to insert a provision in the forthcoming IRR that will require the DOJ to secure a court order before it can restrict or block the posting or publication of content and data that it deems libelous and violative of certain provisions of the law.

There are limits to what a non-lawyer can say in assessing the new law because of legal technicalities involved. But being an advocate of private property rights protection - both physical and intellectual property - it is important that a law be enacted that will expand, not restrict, the citizens’ freedom of expression.

Throwing out RA 10175 will embolden certain individuals to interfere, intercept, or alter data that are passed and transmitted to the web.

For instance, a news portal like interaksyon.com can be hacked and its headline stories can be changed to highly offensive content like pornographic materials or hateful campaigns. Or a new website using the existing trademark and logo of highly popular companies is set up to sell counterfeit products. Even if the perpetrators of such crime have been identified and caught, the existing system of penalties against them are not clear and harsh enough.