Child pornography control guidelines of 2015 ignored by ISPs

The growing publicity in 2020 over the non-compliance of telecommunication companies with the anti-child pornography law of 2009 (RA 9775) has brought into review the government response and the NTC Guidelines of 2015 which have been generally ignored as the ISPs have failed to install software to bloc on-line sexual abuse of children and child pornography. – PREDA 

NTC issues guidelines to filter online child porn

Rainier Allan Ronda, The Philippine Star
Posted at Jul 17, 2015

MANILA, Philippines – The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has issued guidelines to Internet service providers (ISPs) to filter child pornography and block access to such websites.

Memorandum Circular 03-07-2015 identifies nine minimum technical and specification requirements to be adopted by ISPs.

These include web filtering on various categories for text, images and videos with explicit category on child pornography; membership or affiliation with recognized source of blocked child porn websites; field tested accuracy of at least 95 percent on web filter for text, images and videos; availability of application program interface for integration with other systems; at least 800 megabyte per second throughput; high availability configuration option; real time updates on signature and categories of websites; rules for blacklisting and white listing; and high storage capacity for preservation of filtered traffic.

“All ISPs are directed to comply with the mentioned functional specifications effective immediately,” the NTC said.

NTC commissioner Gamaliel Cordoba and deputy commissioners Delilah Deles and Carlo Jose Martinez signed the circular on Tuesday.

The circular was published in The STAR yesterday. It will take effect 15 days after publication in a newspaper of general circulation, and the University of the Philippines Law Center is provided three certified copies.

The guidelines are in compliance with Republic Act 9775, or the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009.

The Philippines is said to have a monopoly on the “supply side” of the emerging Internet child porn racket called web camera child sex tourism (WCST) by Terre des Hommes, a European anti-child abuse and exploitation group.

Hans Guijt, head of the special projects and campaign of Terre Des Hommes Netherlands who led the group’s “Sweetie” project in 2013, said the country has a major role to play to address the issue.

The NTC earlier admitted that the Philippines had no capability to identify cyber-porn content and sites.

Aside from the installation of filtering software, the NTC said they would change the Internet protocol version to enable authorities to monitor Internet activity in smaller and specific locations, such as residences.