The Philippine national ID system must be ‘slain upon sight’

IAM enjoying and at peace using my Senior Citizen ID. Upon presentation, I am identified for purposes of discount or priority, and that’s it. No “record history” and no “registered information” gathered, stored, maintained, and preserved in a database. It is simply an old-fashioned ID.

But, borrowing Bob Dylan’s words, “the times they are a-changin,” unfortunately, for the worse.

If the Consultative Committee’s draft constitution with a standardless citizensurveillance provision takes effect, the Philippine Identification System Act (Republic Act No. 11055) signed by President Duterte forebodes a government capable of easily violating our privacy. The outcome will be a monitored-fearcontrolled society.

Under the law, “every citizen or resident alien shall register personally” with the proper government agencies such as the local civil registrar office for purposes of obtaining an identification card (ID) usable in both “public and private transactions.” The word “shall” is a command. It does not connote an optional choice not to register. One year from the law’s effectivity, people will compulsorily line up to get IDs.

It shall begin with the subject being assigned a “Philsys Number” (PSN). Information such as birth, fingerprint, photo, and iris-scan shall be biometrically obtained without discretion. The law provides that the ID “shall serve as the official government issued identification document of card holders in dealing with all government agencies, local government units, GOCCs, government financial institutions, and all private sector entities.”

Upon ID presentation, the individual will be subjected to “authentication” — meaning identity-verification from the government’s “central identification platform” known as the Philippine Identification System (Philsys) administered by the Philippine Statistic Authority (PSA).

Thereafter, information about the transaction, such as but not limited to the “details of authentication request processed by the PSA, including the date the request was made and processed, the requesting entity and the response,” will be entered in a “Philsys Registry” as “registered information” which will be part of the subject’s “Record History” in the system.

One might argue “why oppose the ID system? If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” That is fallacious. The starting point must always be the right to privacy which essentially means the right to be unknown. Except for public officials, it is not for the government to compel revelation or recording of individual information. Its obligation is to protect such information’s unavailability.

Entry of an initial transaction is harmless, but a significant accumulation of information through time maintained in a database containing “all government transactions” and private ones — such as details of where, how, and when you paid taxes, deposited money, voted for a candidate, applied for employment, enrolled for schooling, sought court records, got married, stayed in a hotel, checked into a hospital, designated additional children as beneficiaries, and many others — can be frighteningly unsettling. Similarly disquieting, government can track your ID’s non-use.

In its 1998 Ople vs. Torres decision declaring unconstitutional a government attempt at establishing a national ID system, the Supreme Court explained: “The ability of sophisticated data center to generate a comprehensive cradle-tograve dossier on an individual and transmit it over a national network is one of the most graphic threats of the computer revolution. The computer is capable of producing a comprehensive dossier on individuals out of information given at different times and for varied purposes. It can continue adding to the stored data and keeping the information up to date. Retrieval of stored data is simple. When information of a privileged character finds its way into the computer, it can be extracted together with other data on the subject. Once extracted, the information is putty in the hands of any person. The end of privacy begins.”

Despite penalty provisions and so-called “safeguards” in Republic Act 11055, the potential of illegally using the information stored in the system is so discernible.

The Supreme Court warned: “The data may be gathered for gainful and useful government purposes; but the existence of this vast reservoir of personal information constitutes a covert invitation to misuse, a temptation that may be too great for some of our authorities to resist.”

Agreeing with the ruling, Justice Flerida Ruth Romero admonished: “So terrifying are the possibilities of a law... in making inroads into the private lives of the citizens... it must, without delay, be ‘slain upon sight’ before our society turns totalitarian with each of us, a mindless robot.” I concur.