BY FR. SHAY CULLEN
THE PHILIPPINES is the Asian center or hub of such horrific abuse of children, some as young as three years old. With a low-cost smart phone connected to the Internet, a child abuser is contacted by a pedophile from a foreign country through Facebook or other social media platforms and offers of money are made to watch sex shows involving young children. Most of the pedophiles are from Europe, the UK, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The police in these countries send tip-offs to the Philippine police but their cyber-unit is understaffed and underfunded. Besides, the Philippine Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and the telecommunications corporations such as PLDT/Smart, Globe and Dito have apparently not set up their child abuse search and detect unit to intercept the streaming or transmission of child abuse material through their server computers as required by the new law.
The Republic Act 11930 or the Anti On-line Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children (OSAEC) Law passed into law last 30 July 2022 is even stronger on mandating the telecommunications corporations to install and block child sexual abuse online. If they fail to do so, their operating chiefs can be prosecuted and the corporation face huge fines, based on a percentage of their overall net worth.
In previous years, they did not obey the 2009 anti-child pornography law (RA 5779) and no one knows if they even paid fines as a penalty for their non-compliance. The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) demanded 47 internet service providers they show cause in a communication in February 2021. The ISPs argued that the anti-child pornography law was clashing with Data Privacy Act and so they could not monitor sites even if they were suspect of allowing the distribution child sexual abuse material.
RA11930 law makes it clear what the telecoms and ISPs must do to protect the human rights of children: “Develop, establish and install mechanisms or measures designed to prevent, detect, respond or report violations of this Act within their websites, platforms, applications, servers or facilities, ……..to counter violations of this Act which may include the installation of available technology, program, or software to ensure that access to or streaming of violations of this Act will be removed, blocked or filtered.”
When these Internet intermediaries, as the ISPs are called, detect or receive information of child abuse images or live streaming of abuse, they must block it at once at most within 24 hours. Also, the law states that they must “develop and adopt a set of systems and procedures for preventing, blocking, detecting, and reporting of OSAEC and CSAEM committed within their platforms.”
If they do not comply and violate the rights of the child by omission, then their personnel will be held liable:“If the offender is a juridical person, the penalty shall be imposed upon the owner, manager, partner, member of the board of directors and/or any responsible officer of an enterprise who participated in the commission of the crime or shall have knowingly permitted or failed to prevent its commission. In addition, the corporation shall be fined a minimum of ten percent (10%) but not more than thirty percent (30%) of its net worth and its respective license or permit to operate may be revoked.
Child victims will have the right to sue them for violation of their rights. These laws and others must be implemented to stop the horrific trade in child abuse shows and protect the rights of the child. (preda.org)/PN
