Sleeping with the enemy

‘Dumb.” former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio couldn’t have chosen a better word to describe the decision of the Department of National Defense (DND) to allow DITO Telecommunity, a 40 percent Chinese-owned telecom company, to build cell towers inside military camps.

China Telecom controls 40 percent equity in DITO in partnership with Filipino-chinese tycoon Dennis Uy, one of President Duterte’s close friends and big campaign donors in the 2016 presidential polls.

DND has not fully divulged its contract with DITO, but based on scant reports it has been issuing to the media, it reasons that it’s only “fair” to allow DITO to build the cell towers as it is “providing telco services in the provinces where most of our camps are” and wanted to place them inside military facilities “for security and protection.”

This safety and protection concern sadly were not afforded to Globe Telecoms and Smart Communications when in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the firms’ cell towers located in remote areas were being burned and bombed by communist rebels for not paying revolutionary taxes.

AFP Spokesman Mgen. edgard Arevalo also stated that DITO will be paying rent “in kind,” but “either through trainings on how to maintain facilities, the use of new technology, as well as assistance from its information and communication technology experts. he said that even without collecting rental fees the arrangement is a “win-win situation.” Military-owned real-estate properties are permitted to be leased out

to private firms, for as long as tenants adhere to a lease contract with a corresponding rental fee, the same arrangement that has been entered into with Globe and Smart, both of which have also built towers inside military camps.

The crucial question to be answered remains: Is the DND deal with DITO beneficial to the Philippine government? Chinese companies are obliged by law to help the Chinese government in their intelligence operations. There are several Chinese laws that compel Chinese individuals and organizations to cooperate with Beijing in intelligence work, if and when asked. China has also been bullying its South eastern neighbors to give in to its fictional nine-dash line, the vaguely located demarcation line used by Beijing in its bid to claim the entire South China Sea.

The fact that China has already occupied major islands in the South China Sea that are within the Philippines’s exclusive economic zone, and its refusal to abide by the international law of the sea makes it technically an enemy of the Philippines. In adjudicating our country’s case against China, the arbitral tribunal on July 12, 2016 ruled overwhelmingly in our favor, determining that major elements of China’s claim—including its nine-dash line, recent land reclamation activities, and other activities in Philippine waters—were all illegal.

Now isn’t the DND’S deal with DITO just like a bullying victim warmly welcoming a bully into his private sanctuary and, with nary a peep of resistance, access to everything in that room? Indeed, how dumb is that?

The DND’S position that Globe and Smart have also their respective towers inside military camps doesn’t make sense. While the two telecom companies’ suppliers come mostly from China, they are not Chinaowned and are not bound by Beijing to snitch on us. Suppliers have no access to whatever these two telecom companies do with their respective businesses.

Carpio says, “You ask any security analyst who’s familiar with cybersecurity, and they will tell you, absolutely do not allow towers to be installed in your military camps. Because it’s like allowing China to put a listening device in your conference room used by your commander… I think it’s a no-brainer, we should not allow it.”

In a phone interview, Rodolfo Salalima, the first secretary of the Philippine Department of Information and Communications Technology under the Duterte administration, pointed out that on matters of national security, particularly in protecting our national sovereignty, the rule in the military is and should be “caution.”

Should there be any doubt, Salalima said, the case must be resolved in favor of protecting our country’s security. even though DITO was awarded a Congressional franchise —a franchise that many experts on national security believe should not have been granted in the first place —the safety of the Philippines remains paramount. “The totality of our military camps,” Salalima noted, “is not the sum total of the mobile business, a public service [that is in fact] clothed with public interest.”

So as not to compromise Philippine security and the Filipino people’s interest, DITO may still engage in communications in the country, but certainly not inside our military camps, Salalima added. It is already a cause for concern that DITO is virtually 40 percent China-owned and controlled. The argument that DITO must be accorded equality in treatment like Globe and SMART/PLDT is fallacious because Globe, PLDT, and Smart are not owned or controlled by China or any other foreign government.

For our military forces to depend on any China-owned communications network or system now is to tread on dangerous waters, should hostilities break out in the future between the Philippines and China. Our country’s current South China Sea dispute with China is enough reason to guide how we should be relating with Globe and Smart on one hand, and DITO on the other.

Salalima said: “More and more, technological advances, such as physical wire-tapping and monitoring of wireless communications, are intruding into our daily lives to the point of invading individual privacy and compromising national security. Why waste public funds and our soldiers’ loyalty to the Constitution and jeopardize the lives of Filipino citizens by providing foreign government and outside dangers with free access into our military camps?”

If other countries, which can boast of far-advanced technologies compared to ours, are always extraprudent when it comes to issues about privacy and security, why does our government seem unconcerned? Given our “inutile… situation,” Salalima lamented, “is it too much to ask that [this administration] be more cautious and vigilant in protecting our national security and the survival of the Filipino people?”

For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com