Are PLDT and Globe Enabling the Transmission of Online Sexual Exploitation of Children?

The Internet Server Providers (ISP's) such as PLDT and Globe in the Philippines and thousands around the world must be challenged and held accountable for allegedly failing to block effectively, with the latest AI enabled software, the transmission of child pornography and the heinous crime of online sexual exploitation of children live-streamed to paying pedophiles around the world. Child abuse and pornography is an international crime and needs a local and international response. Globe is planning to expand into Europe, but we will campaign against it if there is no change.

The Philippines has been named as the world hot spot for child pornography and online sexual exploitation of children. Only a few weeks ago 13 children more were rescued from cyber-crime dens in Biliran. Home for under investigated clerical sexual abuse, where a US priest, Kenneth Pius Hendricks and others sexually abused children for decades.   

The ISPs must be held accountable for failing to obey and fully respect the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009 otherwise known as Republic Act 9775 by installing up-to-date effective blocking software in their servers. This is the only effective answer to the rampant widespread child pornography “pandemic” sweeping the Philippines and the world.  

Globe informed me that after eleven years of failing to comply with the law they installed in 2017 DNS software to block websites that they know or contain child porn and said they depend on the Department of Justice to inform them of such websites. This is most likely a category based and very simple and cheap software. It is most likely to be very ineffective since there are daily streams of child porn passing through Globe servers and those of PLDT. The illegal and horrific images of little children being sexually abused live on the internet is capable of reaching the computers, tablets, and smart phones of Filipinos and pedophiles abroad as detected by law international enforcement.

As Globe tells me there is new child porn website to quickly replace the old. That’s because they have outdated ineffective cheap DNS software. What they should have, and they know it is Real time; Artificial Intelligence (AI) based software. This continues to crawl the worldwide internet for signals and sites promoting child porn and live streaming. It detects instantly and continues to update in real time by machine learning using Artificial Intelligence (AI). No human employees needed, it is strong, and lives forever once installed as a High-Tech expert from Zyalin Software Company informed me since they design such effective software.

PLDT/Smart responds and informs me that to meet their requirements under the RA 9775, 2009 law where they are required to install software to block child pornography, but have not done so for eleven years,  said they are proposing a solution to Government to act, not them. “We have been suggesting that the government consider the use of a technology solution developed by Microsoft for this purpose”. Also they said in a letter to me: “For example, at this point, it is not possible for ISPs to selectively block bad content being live-streamed via global internet platforms. If Philippine ISPs attempt to do this, the entire global internet platform will be blocked”. This is totally wrong as companies with powerful AI blocking software can do it.

PLDT/Smart and Globe can stop the horrible sex crimes against children and prevent them from happening. They must obey the law and install the latest effective blocking filters. However why do they not have the latest most effective child porn blocking software? Because it will slow down their Network, that’s why. Because customers will have to wait a few seconds longer to connect and might switch to a rival ISP.  Really it is about greed and money not about children being raped and abused over the ISPs servers.  Perhaps, they have some sweetheart deal with the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to ignore the law and pay a small fine for not complying.

If President Rodrigo Duterte is the strong-minded, iron-fisted champion of law and order and child protection, to save the nation he will act bravely and decisively order the ISPs like PLDT/Smart and Globe to obey RA 9775 the Anti-Child Pornography Law of 2009. I believe that he is already planning to do this.

Republic Act 9557, under Section 9, says: “The duties of Internet Server Providers (ISP) to monitor the content passing through their servers notify the police of illegal content and provide the authorities the particulars of users who gained or attempted to gain access to an Internet address which contains any form of child pornography.  All ISPs shall install available technology, program or software to ensure access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography will be blocked or filtered.”

The Cyber-crime Prevention Act of 2012 otherwise known as Republic Act 10175 also bans cybersex and child pornography, among other things. President Rodrigo Duterte can increase his huge popularity, now at 72 percent, if he will recommend a swift amendment to the law that will increase the penalty to the ISPs for non-compliance to ten million pesos a day until they fully comply with the law and install the most effective efficient child porn AI based blocking software. The fines paid can be for the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to help child victims. The law can back-fine the ISPs for violating the law for 11 years, at a million a day.

As you read this, thousands of young Filipinos are exposed to viewing, damaging, disturbing and psychologically hurtful content passed through the ISP servers on the Internet. These are illegal graphic images on home-made videos of young children- girls and boys- being sexually raped and abused. Your child could be viewing these terrible videos and pictures without your knowledge. You can be sure they won’t tell you and you will never know but might notice disturbing changes in their personality and character.

You might think it is due to drugs but now think- child pornography. Their teenage peers download them and share them through the Internet enabled by the ISPs. Some teenagers also make child pornography videos of their own sexual abuse of young girls and boys and share them with classmates or gang-mates or upload them on YouTube. They extort sexual favors and money from underage victims by threatening to post the videos. A young uncle of two small children abused them and uploaded the child sexual abuse on Youtube possibly through Globe or PLDT or their subsidiary. He is now charged with child abuse and cybersex abuse of children. Hundreds of children are sexually abused daily and The ISP's go free, for now.

This online sexual exploitation of children through the ISPs must change. Globe and PLDT/Smart must obey the RA 9775 law. Every day, more children are sexually abused and damaged and it could be your child. It is time to act and hold the ISPs accountable for eleven years of disobeying the law and allowing thousands of acts of abuse over their servers.         

Your Child or Grandchild Could Be Next CP Victim

Children as young as six can access the internet and parents and grandparents don't have a clue about it. Disgusting and psychologically damaging images are being sent to cell-phones, computers and pads daily and some may just pop up on your child's or grandchildren's device. It is a traumatic experience for anyone especially a child to see images of another child being sexually assaulted by an adult. Your child will have a radical change of relationship and perception of adults, their parents, and the world as a result. The innocent child will be psychologically assaulted, shocked, haunted, and damaged. 

My recent article calling for new laws to curb child pornography everywhere and especially in the Philippines  drew a letter of concern from Social Welfare Undersecretary Parisya H. Taradja.  I claimed that the present laws are not being implemented to compel internet service providers (ISPs) to filter and block child pornography as mandated by RA9775.

The Undersecretary and millions more people have reason indeed to be concerned that child pornography is a worldwide phenomena and is uncontrolled and can be on the computer or cell phone of every child or adult without their consent. Every picture or image of a child being abused or even simulated violent rape images or videos cause children or women to be raped and abused somewhere in the world. The child is violated every time his or her image is viewed and passed on from one offender to another. The images stimulate more and more acts of abuse against children and women. 

Parisya H. Taradji, Undersecretary for Operations and Programs group of the DSWD, when she read my column, advised me to contact the Inter-agency Council against Child Pornography (IACACP). (see the full article on www.preda.org). The IACACP is mandated by R.A. 9775 to monitor compliance and the implementation of Republic Act 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009. God knows I spent many a long day with the legal team of former Senator Jamby Madrigal making suggestions to them and to the UNICEF legal expert assigned to help draft the law. 

I lobbied successfully in particular for that provision in the law to compel internet service providers and telephone companies to install filters to block the access to child porn web sites and to block unwanted child porn pictures being downloaded into computers and cell phones.

But as far as I can find out, they do not comply with the law. The IACACP apparently knows this because it says on its website that as many as 20,000 illegal images of children being sexually abused are posted on-line every day. This is just an estimate but it shows that the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are not obeying or implementing the law. They can also check with the UK based Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to have a check of Philippine internet providers. They are authorized to search for the child porn websites whereas citizens cannot do so legally. 

Our friends at the IACACP, Director Paricia B. Luna of the Social Technology Bureau, the government officials, and NGO members of the IACACP like ECPAT and Stairways Foundation, have to get very serious and challenge and confront the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and the ISPs with their violations of the law. They ought to pressure them to get the filters and remind them they could be aiding and abetting criminal acts by allowing free access to anyone, even children, to view child pornography. The images of child abuse is the driving force for some pedophiles to go out and rape and even murder children. 

I wrote to Undersecretary Parisya H. Taradji in reply, "Preda cares for victims of sexual abuse in our children's recovery homes and know from their terrible experience the devastating effect of abuse and child pornography that drives the abuser to commit heinous crimes." 

The Internet Watch Foundation in the UK is authorized to police the internet and access and search for child pornography legally, whereas we are not. If any internet service provider finds any such image, they are obliged by law to report it to IACACP agency. The server providers can block it themselves and report it to IWF. How many reports have there been? 

I e-mailed a vice president of PLDT last week asking if he had any information about PLDT filters in place against child pornography and he replied he had no knowledge and asked another official, but we have no reply yet. I invite all ISPs to respond and inform the nation what they have done to protect children online and to curb child porn coming through their servers. 

The law is the law and it must, for the sake of the nation, be respected and fully implemented for the children and the people. 

Battling Internet Child Pornography

While the watery floods killed and damaged hundreds of people in the Philippines, many of them children, another kind of flood continuously destroying the innocent lives of children and youth .That’s the flood of child pornography coming into the Philippines and more of it made here with Filipino children being abused, videotaped and transmitted over the Internet. Even during the floods, the Preda children crises center was rescuing victims of child sexual abuse. Displaced children need extra special protection from traffickers and pedophiles during calamities. Our children's homes are full to overflowing with horrific cases. Child pornography is one of the most evil stimulators leading to child sexual abuse.

The internet server providers, telephone companies and broadband providers bear the greatest responsibility for allowing this filthy internet traffic to flood our computers and corrupt our people. It can be monitored, filtered and controlled. In 2004, The British Telecom Company (BT) developed and installed the first filtering software to block access of internet customers to child pornography sites.

A child protection UK industry body, the Internet Watch Foundation monitors child porn sites and feed the BT Cleanfeed software with every child pornography web site address (URL) it can find. The program has been authorized by the European Union and it will bring in similar blocking laws in the future. Germany has also moved to pass a law to block access

This made BT one of the most admired and ethical telephone companies in the world and many have followed their example. In the Philippines, Globe, Sun and Philippine Long Distance Telephone (PLDT) and its sister company SMART have to give the good example and do this voluntarily because it is the right and good and ethical thing to do. Filtering and blocking child porn protects children from being abused and exploited in the real world in cyber porn shops and dens and then being victimized again and again virtually on the internet. These companies have enormous responsibility to act ethically on this issue.

The first to do it will reap great rewards and the gratitude of worried parents and every civil society organization, NGO, church agencies will promote the safe and Cleanfeed internet provider.

Why they don’t do it is answered by one simple word “profit”. The fear of losing customers if they introduce blocking software is in their minds. Yet if all the big internet provider companies led by PLDT-SMART agree to do it together then none would loose business. The chairman of the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Smart Communications Manuel Pangilinan and PLDT President and CEO Napoleon L. Nazareno are now challenged as never before to exercise corporate responsibility by giving the lead in protecting children on the internet by blocking child porn instead of blocking Skype, the free internet-based telephone service. If they can block Skype, they can block child porn.

This is what Internet server providers and telephone companies will have to do when the new Philippine anti-child pornography law is finally signed by President Gloria Arroyo, hopefully before the end of the year. Soon, under the new law it will be a serious crime to make, possess or distribute child pornography in the Philippines either over the internet or by any means whatsoever.

PLDT is the provider of DSL broadband in the Olongapo-Subic area and what an expensive DSL it is for a slow connection. We need fast broadband DSL to advocate children’s rights and protect them from abuse and exploitation. We at Preda and other child protection agencies should be getting the full support of PLDT for this important apostolate. What I surmise is that the numerous sex bars, clubs, and hotels, some of them using prostituted children, are downloading pornography and thus they are apparently getting the best connections speeds.

Why does PLDT need to make profits by selling connections to these sex-for-sale establishments? They are a massive monopoly and need to exercise more corporate responsibility. PLDT and all other phone companies should voluntarily block access to child pornography web sites and protect the vulnerable children. They can help turn this country, known for shameful child prostitution, to one admired for its corporate responsibility, virtue and protection of children. They can lead by good example. IF NOT, WHY NOT?