The hacking of the website of the state-owned Philippine News Agency highlights the need for a better Philippine cybersecurity policy, online rights lobby group Democracy.net.PH (PHNetDems) said Sunday evening.
According to reports, the PNA website was defaced by a group calling itself the “Chinese Hacker EvilShadow Team”. The website has since been restored.
“We do not wish to over-hype this incident, which after all, amounts to nothing more than a negligible act of vandalism even if tainted by looming tensions between us and China. Still, each attack on a Philippine government website, no matter its gravity, undermines the credibility of our national infrastructure as safeguarded by our national cybersecurity policy,” the PHNetDems said.
Although the Philippines has an existing Cybercrime Prevention Act that punishes cyber-vandals, it has been suspended by the Supreme Court because of petitions questioning the law’s constitutionality. The PHNetDems have criticized the law, calling it a piece-meal reactionary measure.
Aside from posing a threat to privacy and freedom of speech, the Cybercrime Prevention Act “does not allocate resources towards building a national cyber-security mechanism, or the development of a rational national cyber-policy that balances rights, governance and economic development, while promoting cyber security,” the group said.
The PHNetDems have proposed the Magna Carta for Philippine Internet Freedom, a crowd-sourced bill that it says “defines the roles to be played by national government agencies and branches of the armed services in the event of an attempted cyberattack of Philippine Government Information and Communications Technology Infrastructure.”
The proposal has been filed at the Senate by Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago but does not have a counterpart bill at the House of Representatives yet.
“We hope that it does not take a serious incident that compromises lives or properties before we are compelled to engage in a serious discussion on a rational, comprehensive and constitutional policy towards the development and defense of our national cyber-resources,” the PHNetDems said.
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Photo: Screenshot of Philippine News Agency website
