Lourdes College

Integrated Basic Education Department

Filipinos and Repressed Social Media Laws against Cybercrimes

Submitted by:
Niño Noel Y. Salcedo
Xyrelle bautista

ABM 12 ST. PJP II

Submitted to:
Maam. Maria Christi Ionissa Sala

Submitted on:
October 11,2022
Statement of the Problem
Social media should provide us not only convenience, but also safety
while enjoying this convenience. However the rising numbers of cybercrimes
in the Philippines hinders the users in attaining their online security. Laws and
bills proposed don’t fully solve the problem since most of them violate the
Filipino’s constitutional rights.
Background of the Study
With the COVID-19 pandemic being a threat for the development and
continuation of everyone’s daily activities, social media is the most accessible
online platform that makes our daily activities more convenient; be it through
entertainment, communication, information, or education. People of different
ages are able to utilize social media to the fullest extent through Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Discord, TikTok, YouTube, etc. According to Kemp (2020),
“there were 73.00 million internet users in the Philippines in January 2020”
and “internet penetration in the Philippines stood at 67% in January 2020.”
With this accessibility, it is not impossible for the same online platform to be
the origin of cybercrimes.
According to Statista (2020), “In June 2021, there were 98.41 thousand
cyberattacks reported in the Philippines, reflecting a significant decline from
the same month of the previous year. The number of cyberattacks in the
country were exponential during the first quarter of the year, reaching as
much as around 1.76 million.” Given these huge and significant numbers,
cybercrime should be considered as an alarming social issue today. With
various and rampant cybercrimes, Filipinos are left to choose between
repressive social media laws to solve these or to have none at all.
Some of the bills and/or laws raised by the legislative branch of the
government of the Philippines are:
- The “Cybercrime Prevention Act” which is debatable from the freedom of
expression perspective; and
- The Anti Fake News bill that never gained traction and focused on social
media users rather than on the platform.
The purpose of this research is to propose the amendment of the existing
laws or bills for it to not violate the constitutional rights of the Filipinos.
Existing laws do help the country online however, there are still certain
loopholes and amending it might furnish them. Addressing this problem will
give the Filipino internet users their much-needed privacy and security. It willalso
contribute to the in-depth understanding of our online laws
Preliminary Literature Review
Cyberbullying in this modern period is greatly increasing; In the Philippines
cyber bullying incidents mostly occur in different social media platforms such
as Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc. According to Alicante., et. al (2020), age
ranged 13-17 years old, In the Philippines have experienced cyber abuse. In
addition cyber bullying for males (44 Percent) and females (43 Percent) is
nearly the same. According to UNICEF U-Report conducted in June 2019,
approximately three-quarters of young people from 30 countries responded
that social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are most common
platforms for cyber bullying. This explains that cyber abuse is very rampant in
this Current World. According to Statista (2022) Facebook is a top used social
media platform in the Philippines with 96.2 percent of internet users.
Additionally, Filipinos spend four hours or more browsing the Internet each
day. Furthermore, females are more vulnerable to cyber bullying, according to
statistics. Cyber bullying occurs regardless of age. Filipino cyber bullies tend
to be inventive, as they employ modified images rather than words to harm
their victims. Others use ostensibly private footage to effectively torment their
victims. In recent news reports, cyber bullying incidents have been recorded
all across the world. For example, bullying has been at the forefront of
technology phenomena that might lead to cyber bullying, teen suicide, and jail
sentences for child pornography. In 2019, The ACG Had recorded 22
additional cases of Cyber Abuse Since April 2017 until March 2019. Majority
of the Victims consist of Minors. Also the data from ACG revealed that there
were 9 minors who are the victims of cyberbullying. Incidents of cyberbullying
happen in social media platforms like Facebook. Example in an instance
where a person forgot to log out his/her Facebook account at an Internet shop.
It can easily be managed by other people as well as to access it without the
knowledge of the owner of the account. As a result, it can lead to many types
of cyber bullying.
One third of the minors in 30 countries said that they have been a
victim of online type of bullying as the result of the survey conducted by
UNICEF. According to the survey, one out of every five young people skipped
school owing to some reason, to violence and cyber bullying.The National
Baseline Survey on Violence against Children in the Philippines (NBS-VAC) in
2016 found that nearly half of children aged 13 to 17 are affected by cyber
violence. In addition the study also shows that female receive a lot of sexual
harassing messages compared to the males. In a June 2019 UNICEF U-
Report study, over three-quarters of respondents said that Social media sites
such as Facebook, according to young people from 30 countries, The most
popular sites for online bullying are Instagram, Snap chat, and Twitter. All
types of bullying stated here also have a catastrophic effect emotionally and
physically to the victim, in worse scenarios this may lead to depression and
traumas.

And with this, the Philippine government has decided to generate laws
to help flatten the curve of cybercrimes. One of these is the Anti-Terrorism Act.
The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 is the current attempt to address the problem
of terrorism and its related activities while still protecting our civil and political
rights. This, however, supersedes the Human Security Act of 2007, that the
military believes is outdated and inadequate to fight terror attacks, including
internet recruitment and terrorist planning. This empowers security personnel
to arrest people without a warrant, perform surveillance on them, and keep
them without charges indefinitely. Furthermore, an anti-terrorist commission
will be formed to decide what constitutes terrorism. According to Human
Rights Watch, the wide involvement of the Anti-Terrorism Council underneath
the new legislation endangers people's liberty rights. This has a connection
with our online security because, unknowingly, a government official might
label a user as a terrorist if they have abnormal behaviors online or are vocal
for their activism online. Republic Act No. 11479 Section 4 states that “a
person who commits an act of terrorism, which is intended to destabilize or
destroy the fundamental political, economic, or social structures of the country,
or create public emergency or seriously undermine public safety, shall be
guilty of life imprisonment”. Terrorism as defined in this section shall not
include advocacy, protest, dissent, stoppage of work, industrial or mass action,
and other similar exercises of civil ang political rights. It shows that this
particular law is not just for the benefit and security of people but for the
protection of the government and other high officials. People are being
stopped from expressing their views and opinions regarding the political
society and not having the justice to claim their rights. The attacks on human
rights activists, as well as this bill handing the government vast and
unregulated powers, will only endanger their safety.
Another bill that was proposed by Senator Joel Villanueva was the
Anti-Fake News bill but that bill didn’t gain enough attention and wasn’t able to
become a law. According to his proposal, “This bill seeks to penalize any
person who maliciously offers, publishes, distributes, circulates and spreads
false news or information or causes the publication, distribution, circulation or
spreading of the same in print, broadcast or online media. Any person who
will be found guilty of committing any of the foregoing acts will be punished by
a fine ranging from One Hundred Thousand Pesos (P100,000) to Five Million
Pesos (P5,000,000) and imprisonment ranging from one (1) to five (5) years.
Stiffer penalties will be imposed if the offender is a public official.” This may be
beneficial and relevant today however it doesn’t fully help address the root
problem.
Hence, the researchers chose the Cybercrime Prevention Act as the
bill that the government should amend or improve in order to solve
cybercrimes in the Philippines. It is stated in the Republic Act No. 10175
section 4 any violation that is related to altering data and information, illegal
access, misuse of devices, cybersex, etc. will find you guilty and be punished
with imprisonment of prision mayor or a fine of two hundred pesos (PhP
200,000) and fine will increase depending on the damage incurred or both.
These stated crimes are the most issues in the use of social media where it
affects many individuals personal information, image and mental health.
Therefore in conclusion, among those three laws, Cybercrime Prevention Act
is the preferable law to solve these social media issues and security with less
hindrance to people's freedom and rights therefore; this is the law that the
government should amend.

Abridged Methodology
This study is an example of a theory synthesis. The focus of theory
synthesis is “to achieve conceptual integration across multiple theories or
literature streams (Jaakola, 2020).” This paper, therefore, is designed to test
our theory that repressive social media laws implemented by the government
in the Philippines can potentially harm the Filipinos through violating their
constitutional rights and to suggest an amendment for the Cybercrime
Prevention Act, as stated in our preliminary literature review.
The following research instruments will be used to obtain the
information needed. First are surveys, used to gather quantitative data on who
agrees to have repressive laws despite its loopholes and who doesn’t.
Second are interviews, used to ask respondents about their opinion about
having such laws. Last are graphic organizers, used to provide a summary of
results.
To ensure that all information needed is obtained, the following data
collecting procedure will be followed. In this study, the researchers first
prepared a survey that can be answered by anyone from different ages and
groups with questions that would ask about their social media presence,
activeness, security, and if they ever experienced being a victim of
cybercrimes. Afterwards, the researchers would interview their closest
acquaintances, friends, or relatives either through online or offline. Datas
gathered will be recorded and summarized through graphic organizers.
With regards to the result of the data gathered from forty-eight
respondents, 64.6% of them do not agree to have laws that repress their
constitutional rights but solve the issue of cybercrimes while 35.4% of them
agreed. The former generally believes that “cybercrime is an issue that can be
 prevented, resolved, and/or dealt with without abridging [our] freedom of
expression. It is our lawmakers' duty to handle that without sacrificing any of
the constitutional rights of any other Filipinos (Selim, 2022).” The latter, on the
other hand, justified their answer, saying that it provides justice for the victims
of cybercrimes (Stephany, 2022).

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