If Congress approves the controversial anti-terror bill that Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is eagerly pushing to become a law, hacking or cracking would soon be considered as an act of terrorism.
What does this mean? It basically raises the penalty for hacking or cracking as provided for in RA 8792, or the E-Commerce Law, from a fine of P100,000 to a whopping P10,000,000 — a 100-fold increase!
The bill also contains a punishment of life imprisonment, but if the act results in the death of a person, the hacker or the cracker could be meted with death. This penal clause is far harsher than the E-Commerce Law which only provides "a mandatory imprisonment of six months to three years."
But more importantly, a hacker or cracker like JJ Maria Giner, recently convicted of hacking the .gov.ph portal, would now be labeled as a terrorist in the same category as those with ten other types of terrorist identified in the bill.
In the proposed law, approved by the committees on justice and foreign affairs at the House of Representatives last October 11, it tagged cyber terrorism as "attacking or threatening to attack cyberspace, by destroying the actual machinery of the information and communication infrastructure, disrupting the information technology underlying the Internet, government or private networks or systems or committing any unlawful act against networks, servers, computers and other information and communication systems."
I wonder how the local Internet community would react to this development. As of now, the industry is not demonstrating the same vehement objections that the militant and civil sectors have been hurling at the bill. — Melvin G. Calimag
Ex-IBM Phils Pinoy GM promoted
Ramon Jocson who used to be the IBM Philippines general manager has recently been promoted to vice president for IBM’s Asia-Pacific region. After his stint in Manila, Mon moved to Singapore as general manager for IBM Global Services for Asean and South Asia. A hardworking and soft-spoken executive, Mon deserves the promotion. Our congratulations to Mon! — Edu H. Lopez
Guess who?
A former managing director of Microsoft Philippines has been busy trying to join the bandwagon of the outsourcing business. He has partnered with some Filipino investors to set up an outsourcing company that would tap the US and Singapore markets. This executive is also talking with a Dubai-based Filipino who has been successful in the entertainment center business for possible partnership. It pays to ride on the booming trend in the industry particularly BPO. — Edu H. Lopez
