MANILA — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) held a town hall meeting on Wednesday, September 9, bringing together public and private sector stakeholders to discuss online child safety, particularly the recent proposal to integrate the national ID system for age verification.
CICC Undersecretary Aboy Paraiso, who led the meeting, said the discussion is crucial as the agency participates in the legislative agenda before Congress and the Senate, particularly efforts to fast-track stricter social media regulations.
“Our friends from our private sector partners to give in their inputs and I like to think that they’re very valuable very valid inputs and hopefully we can carry them over into legislation,” he said.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said that under the proposed use of the PhilSys system, children aged 13 and below will be banned from accessing social media platforms, while those aged 13 to 17 will require parental consent.
“From what I understand in the bill, (those aged below 13) will be totally banned from using such platforms. For (ages) 13 to 17 they would be allowed but with restrictions and with parental consent,” PSA Assistant National Statistician for the PhilSys Registry Atty. Henedine Palabras explained.
“I would say that the national ID system would really be a great platform for us to establish the real issue of the person trying to open an account or manage an existing account on these platforms,” Palabras added.
Private sector stakeholders, however, raised concerns over the need for safeguards, particularly in protecting users’ privacy.
The National Privacy Commission (NPC), meanwhile, vowed to remain an independent watchdog over the government’s implementation of the proposed regulation, emphasizing that privacy and anonymity are two different things.
“We are also mindful that the decisions on the processing of personal information are there to protect everyone. Our goal is to both be a cooperator with the government agencies such as the CICC and the DICT but also to keep our status as an independent agency tasked to enforce the (legal privacy) law,” Atty. Reinier Abdon from the NPC said.
The DICT and CICC earlier met with representatives of tech giant Meta in Singapore, where they discussed measures to mitigate child violence including the newly proposed age verification.
Admitting this goes against the current business model of the social media company, Paraiso said Meta is already “reconsidering” some of its measures, but the company will have no choice but to comply once the proposed legislation is passed.
“Whoever violates our laws, we are open to excluding them in our internet space so I think that made a big part of our discussion and that really got them to reconsider their so-called business model,” he said.
“Kasi once the legislation is there, there’s no choice,” Paraiso added.
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