Spotlight: Data security in the Philippines – Join the discussion
“The privacy of communication and correspondence shall be inviolable except upon lawful order of the court,” runs a TV commercial in the Philippines, quoting the country’s constitution.
This commercial, which I caught being repetitively aired on Solar TV over the past weekend, came through with the air of a public bulletin, reminding Filipinos of their rights, and purposefully placing the clause concerning communications privacy at the fore.
Such is the position that governments have been forced into with the revelation that the US is manning a global surveillance network that there has become a palpable need to reassure the public of what their rights are and what is being done to protect their sovereignty from intrusion by foreign spies.
PRISM has become the core of these worries. Leaked records of the surveillance programme operated by the Washington, D.C.-based National Security Agency (NSA), which combs the planet collecting electronic data and telephone call metadata records, shows that countries in the Middle East – Iran, Pakistan, Jordan – have been the sources of the highest volume of collected data.
Within ASEAN, Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia have been the largest focus of the NSA, assumedly because of the extremist threats that brood on the peripheries of these countries. Conspicuously low on the radar is the Philippines, which also battles its own band of Islamic insurgents, most extreme of which being the Al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayaaf.
The reminder of privacy rights and the seeming aloofness of the near-Orwellian US surveillance programme would make it feel like the Philippines isn’t being intruded as much as others places in the globe. But has the leaking of the cyber surveillance reality our world is plugged into eroded our trust beyond repair?
How safe do you feel in your day-to-day communications online and over the phone?
Join Inside Investor’s editorial team for a live chat on Twitter by mentioning @insideinvestor and using the hashtag #investvine. The chat will begin on Friday 21 at 3pm Malaysia time (GMT +8).
Topics will include:
- Are cyber attacks the proxy for actual war?
- How much will these events compel you to curtail your posting of private information online?
- How effective are additional security layers and for how long?
- Could cyber war be a proxy for the South China Sea dispute?
“The privacy of communication and correspondence shall be inviolable except upon lawful order of the court,” runs a TV commercial in the Philippines, quoting the country’s constitution. This commercial, which I caught being repetitively aired on Solar TV over the past weekend, came through with the air of a public bulletin, reminding Filipinos of their rights, and purposefully placing the clause concerning communications privacy at the fore. Such is the position that governments have been forced into with the revelation that the US is manning a global surveillance network that there has become a palpable need to reassure the public...
“The privacy of communication and correspondence shall be inviolable except upon lawful order of the court,” runs a TV commercial in the Philippines, quoting the country’s constitution.
This commercial, which I caught being repetitively aired on Solar TV over the past weekend, came through with the air of a public bulletin, reminding Filipinos of their rights, and purposefully placing the clause concerning communications privacy at the fore.
Such is the position that governments have been forced into with the revelation that the US is manning a global surveillance network that there has become a palpable need to reassure the public of what their rights are and what is being done to protect their sovereignty from intrusion by foreign spies.
PRISM has become the core of these worries. Leaked records of the surveillance programme operated by the Washington, D.C.-based National Security Agency (NSA), which combs the planet collecting electronic data and telephone call metadata records, shows that countries in the Middle East – Iran, Pakistan, Jordan – have been the sources of the highest volume of collected data.
Within ASEAN, Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia have been the largest focus of the NSA, assumedly because of the extremist threats that brood on the peripheries of these countries. Conspicuously low on the radar is the Philippines, which also battles its own band of Islamic insurgents, most extreme of which being the Al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayaaf.
The reminder of privacy rights and the seeming aloofness of the near-Orwellian US surveillance programme would make it feel like the Philippines isn’t being intruded as much as others places in the globe. But has the leaking of the cyber surveillance reality our world is plugged into eroded our trust beyond repair?
How safe do you feel in your day-to-day communications online and over the phone?
Join Inside Investor’s editorial team for a live chat on Twitter by mentioning @insideinvestor and using the hashtag #investvine. The chat will begin on Friday 21 at 3pm Malaysia time (GMT +8).
Topics will include:
- Are cyber attacks the proxy for actual war?
- How much will these events compel you to curtail your posting of private information online?
- How effective are additional security layers and for how long?
- Could cyber war be a proxy for the South China Sea dispute?
