Philippines’ new SIM card law could be abused by corrupt officials, critics say
- The SIM Card Registration Act is meant to crack down on mobile phone scams and other crimes, but has raised concerns of data privacy and abuse
- Critics also point to a section of the law that lets authorities carry out ‘spoofing’ of a registered SIM, in which a caller displays a different number to deceive someone during an investigation
His shop assistant said he would not register at all: “They’re collecting personal data and you don’t know what they’ll do with it.”
Chief among the worries by critics is a section of the law that allows authorities to carry out “spoofing” of a registered SIM during “authorised activities of law enforcement agencies”.
Spoofing, according to the US Federal Communications Commission, is done when a caller “deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity”. In other words, the caller could display the number of a company, state agency, or person a victim knows or trusts.
Jamael Jacob, a former director of the Privacy Policy Office of the National Privacy Commission, noted that the law did not spell out any procedures that require users of government-owned SIM cards to register their own numbers.