Cybercrime bill to include cellphones
THE PROPOSED “Cybercrime Prevention Act” which is now on its tenth revision has extended its coverage to include anti-spam measures and “communication devices” such as cellphones.

The proposed bill, the proponents of which include experts from the private sector, will again be filed before the House of Representatives’ Committee on Information and Communication Technology next year. Under this Committee are six subcommittees that focus on various fields of information and communication technology including IT security.

According to Albert dela Cruz, co-chair of the previous subcommittee on Information Security of the Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (ITECC), forerunner of the present Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT) that drafted the proposed bill two years ago, existing provisions in the bill have been refined to address wireless devices and that the spam measures also cover SMS or text messaging for cell phones.