Last Saturday (September 15), President Aquino signed into law a bill to fight cybercrime in an attempt to put an end on everything illegal online from forgery to child pornography.
The bill will give breathing space to law-enforcers who have difficulty charging people who commit crimes online since no legal codes existed to penalise their actions.
Some of the bill's key definitions and highlights are the following:
- covers most forms of hacking
- defines cybercrimes as "offences against the confidentiality, integrity and availability" of a computer system and also as gaining illegal access to or interception of data
- penalizes spamming as well as "cyber-squatting" -- the use of an Internet domain name to mislead or destroy reputation
- defines "computer-related offences" for forgery, fraud, identity theft, cybersex and child pornography
- punishes libel but extent of definition of attack (e.g. in social networks) will be left to the lawyers to weigh in
- creates a "Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center" to implement law
