We need a Cybercrime Bill because I think the E-Commerce act authored by Janet Toral is not enough. After 5 years it is still in its infancy stage.

However…

Any law, decree or whatever legal policies does nothing without a good implementation. The CIDG for example is hunting some Filipino hackers (http://technews-isaw.blogspot.com…) but I think they are only doing it to gain face. They should have focused on minute but important details in computing. The supposed Filipino hacker was alleged defacing government sites (which is actually not harmful but is indeed against the law). Why couldn't they just track down people who does phishing scam (you know, scamming through email telling them they won something or they need to upgrade their accounts and stuff to get sensitive information from the victim like password and credit card numbers) and those using fraudulent credit in online transactions. Of course, only through a court order would they be allowed to dig up information in an ISP about someone violating the law.

BTW, I am not a law student

Yup, blackhat. But the CIDG is like a diety, analogous to saying "However white a lie is its still a lie, confess or go to hell" lols. Maybe these grey and white hat Filipino hackers should not do a thing and wait for international organized hackers to steal information and bomb government sites instead. Or couldn't they just hire these people? There are actually companies in other countries that hires such personality and allow them to attack their sites, report their findings, and the company fixes holes. Couldn't they be more creative ?

[1] It is this reason also that it wil be hard to push for a CyberCrime bill because the problems right now is not the E-Commerce Law itself but its implementation. For this reason, two issues are now being addressed at the E-Commerce Oversight. First, lobbying for a CyberCrime budget to be included in the government's 2006 budget. 2nd, the creation of a memorandum circular at the NTC in compliance to the creation of document retention guidelines. In this case, it will focus more on log files to aid as well the service provider, hacking/cracking, confidentiality provision implementation of the E-Commerce Law.

yeah, I agree.. here in the philippines, the only things you can't do in the net is those that are extremes.. usually, only hackings are given attention, the rest are not.. in my opinion, other types of crimes are as dangerous as any other hacking.. and besides, hackings doesn't really affect much of the population of net-users..