A Subscriber Identity Module is, per se, unique to the user. With RA 11934 making SIM registration mandatory, is there foolproof protection left against privacy, identity theft, hackers, and scammers when a “ghost” other than the user gains access to a lot of information and data stored in it?
There is neither empirical evidence nor robust studies to validate how mandatory registration lowers crime rates or helps in crime detection. What if those behind surveillance systems render rich businessmen, investors and captains of industry easy prey since a broad range of financial transactions could be tracked or in the case of political activists, red-tagging be made systematically worse?
With the explosion of technologies that flattens the world and where knowledge and resources are connecting all over the planet as never before, we should benefit from all it has to offer. In our geopolitical milieu, it has hardly made any headway as a “force for good — for business, the environment and people everywhere” precisely because the bureaucratic norm appears to purposely digress from where globalization is about to take us.
The officialdom’s rather “damaged psyche” has made top bureaucrats repressive to the point Congress has even legislated against the open and uninterrupted use of electronic gadgets to keep connected with the world or with every man on earth. The ruling class in our midst wants to “deactivate” our connectedness unto one another unless we have registered our SIMs.
Our policymakers should return to the old order some 40 years ago and stick their lives with it as they have proved to be an anachronism of our modernizing times. The SIM card registration issue is short of an invasive approach to police the range and whole breadth of our connectedness where the rest of humankind benefits.
Government meddles in all our affairs even as it lacks the agency to run after those using technologies for crime-related activities. Worse, what if an enforcement job is transformed into a profitable cottage industry? Just when the “cost of communication is falling towards zero,” regulatory operatives are reposed with duties too vulnerable to abuse.
What the present and past dispensations have done — and they are good at it — is to take us back to the “unflat world.” In so doing, have they not become the new “identity thieves, hackers and scammers” with full access to our financial accounts and over our private and public affairs? It’s like burning the house to get rid of the rat.
We must find instructive what Winston Churchill said: “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy could be the thoughtless act of a single day.” What metrics could have led police or crime-detection officials to equate cell phones with guns?
The state requires permits from everyone rather than applies the whip to criminal-specific targets undertaking their unlawful tradecraft with the use of loose SIMs. In no time, the next public signs might read from “No guns allowed” to “No cellphones allowed” in banks, corporate boardrooms and conferences — out of fear of fictional crimes. Our police operatives, policymakers and bureaucrats are way behind tech-wise to even regulate, apply fines and penalties, and exert censorship on global technology.
What if our regulatory agents block SMS messages on our cellphones on the unfounded suspicion that some of us are communists, destabilizers, or influential critics as they did in China after the infamous Tiananmen Square massacre on 4 June 1989 when government censors were blocking messages using jamming technology?
The absence of legal safeguards to protect against abuse matters. That’s when it creates a chilling effect on people’s rights under pain of systematic suppression. It is therefore the proper subject of judicial oversight given the inherent dangers of a broad-spectrum access to subscriber’s data on all fronts.
Absent a comprehensive data protection infrastructure to protect the personal details and data of subscribers — unique to them — this disconcerting policy has to be assailed.