EDITORIAL - Stick with SIM card registration for now

President Rodrigo Duterte has vetoed a bill that would have required people who want to buy a Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) card to have them registered using their real name. The reason? The bill also proposed that people should use their real names when creating a social media account.

The president said in doing so he was protecting free speech and data privacy.

In a previous editorial we said the proposal about SIM card registration has its merits, especially when it comes to protecting people against phishing and other scams. However, we also said it will also open the opportunity for criminals as well as just about anyone --including government agencies and private groups who believe they are above the law-- to target and even isolate and locate particular individuals. We said safeguards should be in place if this bill is to be approved into law.

Now it seems something stopped it from becoming a law. Not the lack of safeguards but because something else had been added to it; the bit about social media accounts.

When Senator Grace Poe originally filed the bill as the Senate committee on public services chairwoman, it was only for SIM cards. Somewhere along the way social media was included in the bill, and that complicated things.

While we are for linking verifiable identities to particular SIM cards, social media is more of a gray area. We recognize this is a platform where anonymity is a choice. Actually, one of the allures of social media is that here you can pretend to be what you want to be or become who you really want to be, for better or for worse, and that tends to complicate matters.

Perhaps changes can be made to remove the social media part of the bill and that particular issue can be addressed and proposed in a new one altogether. We still want to avail of the protections SIM card registration can bring but, again, with safeguards in place.