Shock waves
October 20th, 2002
The most recent bombings in Zamboanga City are likely to generate shock waves to revive flagging lawmaker interest in passing an antiterrorism bill or bills, as well as provide Malacańang another excuse to push for a national identification system.
However, the antiterrorism bills that I’ve seen have almost the same flaws, besides many of their provisions’ having been patterned on the US Patriot Act of October 2001.
An extensive evaluation of these bills will take more space than this column has. The very bottom line, however, is that they begin with definitions of terrorism broad enough to include not only bombings like the ones that have plagued Zamboanga, but even citizen protests against high electricity rates or government policies.
A bill introduced by Imee R. Marcos, for example, ingenuously includes among terrorist acts the failure to act, or, as the bill (House Bill 3802) refers to it, an “omission.” The same bill includes, perhaps not coincidentally on its list of terrorist acts, “an act or omission that is committed” (sic) “to cause serious interference with, or serious disruption of an essential service, facility or system, whether public or private.”
An “essential service, facility or system,” could very well mean such public utilities as water and electricity—“serious interference” with which would constitute a terrorist act. The police and Philippine security agencies will of course decide what constitutes “serious interference.” Agencies that have been known to regard street protests as threats to the State are not likely to be liberal in their interpretation of this and similar, vaguely worded provisions.
In addition, the bills empower the police and the military to “secretly search” private homes so long as the owners are suspected of having committed, or of being about to commit, terrorist acts. All of the bills I’ve seen also authorize the same agencies—the PNP, the NBI and military intelligence units—to intercept private communications in whatever form: whether snail mail, e-mail, fax, or SMS (text) messages.
These are the same agencies whose failure to prevent the bombings in Zamboanga and elsewhere has rightly provoked some congressmen to question their competence despite the huge intelligence funds they have access to. And yet the antiterrorism bills I’ve seen assume that merely enhancing the powers of the agencies that have failed to protect the citizenry in so many instances will prevent terrorism, in effect rewarding them for their incompetence.
These same bills also suggest that in their proponents’ views, it is our rights—to peaceable assembly, to be secure in our homes, to the privacy of our communications—which have made terrorism possible. This is a dangerous assumption that here, as in the United States in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, could result in the routine curtailment of the most basic rights in both law and practice.
The police and other security agencies have expressed their enthusiastic support for an antiterrorism bill so long as it will give them more powers. Naturally. More powers mean they don’t have to do their jobs better, and more powers mean more funds as well.
The magic word is “funds.” The government funding required for the “solutions” that have been proposed for the terrorism problem will mean windfalls not only for the police and other government security agencies, but also for the contractors that will have to be hired to put in place a national ID system that’s even remotely credible.
All the suggestions so far made to restrict the cost of such a system have been either impractical or limited in use. The suggestion to use Social Security System cards, for example, excludes those who’re either not in the work force, or whose employers have not bothered to implement the SSS law, or who work in the vast underground economy of this country. The use of tax identification number (TIN) cards for the same purpose will exclude those who don’t pay taxes—and, as the Bureau of Internal Revenue well knows, these citizens are legion.
The only alternative would be to adopt a totally new system altogether—whose cost, however, will run into the billions. Although the simple-minded seem to assume that putting an ID system in place is a matter of requiring everyone to have an ID card, a credible system will require at least three components in addition to the card itself.
The first is a means of identity verification before the card is issued, meaning a system of determining whether the person applying for a card is indeed who he says he is. This will require the submission of birth certificates and other documents to prove the applicants’ identity.
Although such proof is already required in the issuance of passports, among others, the numbers involved would run into the millions. If only those 15 years old and above were required to have an ID, we would be looking at some 40 million people at least. The difficulties and cost involved would almost naturally invite the formation of the usual syndicates to forge such documents, which would compromise the integrity of the system at the very start.
Assuming credible verification of the identities of those to whom cards have been issued, however, the next step would be to enter the information amassed in the process into a national database, which in turn should be accessible enough to verify card authenticity. To achieve its purpose—which is to sort out who among the population are terrorists and criminals and who are not—the police and security agencies must be able to establish that the card a citizen is presenting is indeed his or hers.
Failing this, the entire system not only collapses but also becomes extremely vulnerable to the usual police and military abuse. The system will require putting up checkpoints not only in airports and other places at risk to terrorist attacks, but even in the streets, where the police are likely to check for IDs, allow those with cards to pass, and detain those without. We can safely speculate that the fates of those without cards will range from being administered the usual beatings, or even a bullet in the back of the head if in the rural areas, or being hauled off for indeterminate confinement in a crowded prison if in the cities.
On the other hand, mere possession of a card will not necessarily guarantee that the holder is no criminal or terrorist. It’s a rare terrorist or criminal who will not get a card once the system is in place. Cards, no matter how sophisticated, can be forged, and even in Third World Philippines there is enough techno-wizardry for an entire industry built around ID card forgery to flourish.
Despite these flaws—no ID card system has ever really worked to achieve its intended purpose—we can expect the usual government contractors to capture the usual juicy, but “disadvantageous to the government” contracts, enough to keep them in Mercedes-Benzes and Jaguars, houses and condos in Alabang, Batangas, Greenhills, Rockwell and the Corinthian, and vacations in Europe, the Bahamas and the United States.
These contractors are likely to be the only winners in any national ID system that the government will put in place. Conspicuously absent from the winners’ circle will be the antiterrorism and anticrime campaign—and, most of all, the people the system is supposed to save from the bombings and other afflictions Filipino flesh is heir to.
(TODAY/ABS-CBNNEWS.COM, October 18, 2002)