Thursday, June 25, 2009

State of emergency

A friend shared this news item on Facebook about two months ago:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/040209-obama-cybersecurity-bill.html

The article was about a Senate bill that would give the US President the power to shut down public and private computer networks, including Internet traffic to and from critical information systems, in the event of a national "cybersecurity emergency."

Online security and hacking, it seems, has emerged as the quintessential 21st-century dilemma not just for us ordinary netizens, but even for the Pentagon too. This thought came to mind again yesterday, as we were preparing for a performance at a protest poetry event, and a friend mentioned that he has become paranoid about whom he approves as Facebook contacts. There hasn't been any equivalent proposal in the Philippines as far as we know, but do those of us who count such controversial figures as left-leaning Congresspersons and militant labor leaders among our Facebook friends have any cause for alarm (or at the very least, a cause of action for a writ of habeas data petition)? Could we perhaps be arrested out of the blue because of the "subversive" literary works that we keep posting on our blogs?

Considering the number of members that online causes are able to attract, it's pretty obvious that the Internet has become an important venue not just for free speech in general, but for political dissent and activism -- or for consciousness-raising, at the very least. Not surprisingly, legal measures like the US Cybersecurity Bill -- and any similar statutes that may crop up in the Philippine Congress -- are bound to draw much criticism.

Control over ICT infrastructures and electronic data inevitably raises such highly political issues as: who exercises control, and who decides when to invoke such power? Who defines these "cyber-emergencies," and what implications do they have for ordinary citizens? National security concerns have been used to justify everything from the Human Security Act to Senate hearings-turned-national embarrassments. If we're going to be taken offline because we (or some clever geeks hacking into Malacanang files) supposedly endanger the political integrity or territorial sovereignty of this Republic, there'd better be a really good explanation...if not free Wi-fi for life once the power re-starts.


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