House panel OKs bill requiring SIM card registration
MANILA, Philippines — The House Committee on Information and Communications Technology approved at a hearing Monday a bill mandating the registration of mobile SIM cards.
Rep. Toby Tiangco (Navotas), who chairs the House panel, also approved consolidating House Bill No. 14 with similar bills also seeking the registration of Subscriber Identity Module cards.
If passed into law, the bill mandates those who intend to purchase SIM cards to register their personal information with telecommunications bodies or authorized card sellers. The new push for SIM card registration comes users have been inundated with scam and spam text messages, with some of them containing personal information like the receiver's name.
The measure was jointly filed earlier by House Speaker Martin Romualdez (Leyte 1st District) and Senior Deputy Majority Leader Sandro Marcos (Ilocos Norte) — the cousin and son of President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. — who argued that the registration of SIM cards will help eradicate criminal activities and scams.
This view is not shared by ICT experts and by rights advocates who have warned Congress that there is no evidence that SIM card registration works and that registration may put personal information at risk.
"Due to the lack of SIM card regulation in the country, it becomes nearly impossible to trace the persons behind the text scams and hold them accountable for fraud, breach of data privacy or other punishable offenses t ha t they commit ted using an unknown mobile number," Romualdez said in his explanatory note.
"The time has come to regulate the sale and distribution of SIM cards in order to promote end-user accountability, prevent the proliferation of mobile phone scams and data breaches, and to assist law enforcement agencies in resolving crimes involving the use of mobile phone units."
Then President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed the same measure in the 18th Congress, with his spokesperson saying the chief executive was "constrained to disagree with the inclusion of social media in the measure, without providing proper guidelines and definitions." The bill had also required the registration of social media accounts, which Duterte said might infringe on privacy rights.
The bill now moves to the plenary for further deliberation.
READ: As talk of SIM card registration revived, senator seeks hearings on scam texts
In a separate press briefing at the Senate on Monday, Sen. JV Ejercito said he would support the proposed SIM Card Registration Act to crack down on the text scams going viral on social media.
"In line with that, I would want to support the SIM Card Registration [bill]. This would greatly prevent scammers and pranksters from doing their modus operandi," Ejercito told reporters.
The bill raised concerns among cybersecurity and privacy experts earlier. Policy analyst Mary Grace Mirandilla-Santos earlier told Philstar.com that the bill might do more harm than good as there is no evidence that SIM card registration actually prevents crime.
Sen. Sherwin "Win" Gatchalian, who filed a bill for SIM card registration in the previous Congress, has filed a resolution calling on the Senate to hold hearings on the scam texts.
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