DICT says it does not actively monitor online red-tagging
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) does not actively monitor online red-tagging, a practice of vilifying and deploying guilt by association by labeling critics of the government, including opposition lawmakers, as communist rebels, if not terrorists.
DICT Secretary Henry Aguda said the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC), which is under DICT, has yet to establish any guidelines in place to identify red-tagging posts and threats.
'The CICC has a threat monitoring center, but right now, we don't have a strict monitoring on that one [red-tagging],' Aguda said during the House TriCom probe into the proliferation of false information online.
'If we're given guidelines and monitoring, we will include it in the threat monitoring center. And if it's mandated by Congress to act on it, we will act on it immediately po,' he added.
Gabriela Party-List Representative Arlene Brosas then said that red-tagging is also a form of peddling false and harmful information, as a Supreme Court decision already defines red-tagging as a threat to life and liberty in 'the act of labeling individuals or organizations as subversives or terrorists, regardless of their actual political beliefs and affiliations.'
Likewise, Brosas said the same Supreme Court ruling also states that red-tagging 'is a type of harassment that has pernicious effects on its targets.'
'Supreme Court Associate Justice Rodil Zalameda defines red tagging, vilification, labeling, and guilt by associatio as acts that threaten a person's constitutional right to life, liberty, and security, which may justify the issuance of a rate of amparo [protection]. It means, it is really a form of disinformation and human rights violations that we need to address and taken seriously,' she said.
Aguda then said that CICC's priority is monitoring illegal gambling, financial scams, where there are clear guidelines on which posts need to be taken down.
'We don't have any guidelines yet on red tagging, so it's hard for us to monitor all the news except for ones wherein the posts gets flagged [by others] or because there is a certain violation, then we coordinate with the [social media] platform immediately,' Aguda said. — BM, GMA Integrated News
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