Hands off our cellphones and SIM cards, groups tells GMA
Consumer advocacy group TXTPower immediately rejected President Arroyo’s newly-created task force seeking to impose mandatory registration of SIM cards and cellphones as a way to curb cellphone theft, dubbing the move “ineffective”, “makes cellphone thieves happy” and “dangerous to civil liberties”.
“Cellphone theft and murders continue because of the incompetence of the Philippine National Police in running after, prosecuting and convicting thieves and syndicates before the courts. This impunity cannot be solved by Mrs. Arroyo’s proposed plan to require mandatory registration,” said TXTPower co-founder and co-convenor Anthony Ian Cruz.
Cruz likewise warned that the politically-embattled Arroyo may also use the Cellphone Registration System proposed by deputy national security adviser and task force chief Virtus Gil as a way to undertake surveillance on her opponents and critics.
“What the President should do is to order the PNP to catch, prosecute and convict the cellphone thieves, bust cellphone syndicates, and to investigate PNP personnel suspected of protecting them,” said Cruz. “Cellphone theft has become a new criminal industry because the
inutile PNP allowed it to become so.”
TXTPower noted that the PNP has yet to produce one conviction of a cellphone thief-cum-murderer.
Cruz also advised the government to obtain permissions from the proper courts to wiretap phones of suspected members of kidnap-for-ransom syndicates and perceived terrorists. “Legal shortcuts, such as the CRS, are ineffective, unconstitutional and destroys whatever trust and confidence the public has for the government.”
TXTPower, which helped popularize the Hello Garci ringtones last year as a form of protest, said the task force and the CRS could be new tools for stifling dissent against the government.
“Cellphone theft is not a national security problem but a police problem,” said Cruz. “Why put Norberto Gonzales’ deputy as task force chief? Can’t the new PNP chief stamp out cellphone theft? Or is the President carrying on her conspiracy to harass and violate the rights of her opponents?”
Cruz said that President Arroyo, her husband Mike, son Mikey and her allies are the butt of a new wave of “Gloria text jokes” in the country. “We are of course suspicious about this sudden show of concern for victims of cellphone theft by a President accused of being an election thief.”
“It is not farfetched that Mrs. Arroyo, whose cellphone was wiretapped in 2004, may want to wiretap her critics en masse through this task force,” said Cruz. “Meanwhile, the relatives of the murdered victims of cellphone theft are not rendered justice due them.”
TXTPower says it is doubtful that all or most of the country’s 40 million cellphone subscribers would accept the CRS.
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