Popular ride-hailing app Uber recently admitted concealing a massive data breach in 2016 that affected up to 57 million of its users (drivers and riders), including Filipinos. While its full extent remains unclear today, the breach and the dearth of information surrounding it should be a proper cause for concern. Read more…
The Foundation for Media Alternatives has successfully conducted its first Privacy and Data Protection Workshop for Civil Society and the Academe in Cebu City. The workshop ran from October 26 to 27, 2017 and was attended by around 20 participants from various civil society organizations and universities in the Visayas. Read more…
Pasay City – The Foundation for Media Alternatives (FMA) was invited by the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality as one of the resource persons during the second public hearing on Gender-based Electronic Violence (SBN 1251) and the E-VAW Law of 2016. The Public Hearing was presided Read more…
This article was originally published on 21 August 2017 as a blog entry at Newsbytes Philippines. For years now, legislators and law enforcement agencies, with support from the executive branch, consistently push for a mandatory SIM card registration in the country. In this Congress, proposals pending at the House of Read more…
11 July 2017 Foundation for Media Alternatives’ statement on a national ID system Officials of the Department of Finance made headlines recently with the pronouncement that the government plans to earmark PhP2 billion for the implementation of a national ID system next year. Together with their peers in the Read more…
The holding of the third cycle of the Philippines’ Universal Periodic Review (UPR) that took place on May 8, 2017 was notable for the FMA. Last year, FMA submitted two reports – one with Privacy International highlighting privacy rights in the country, and the other with the Association for Progressive Communications Read more…
In March 2016, the Philippines took global headlines by storm when the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) website was breached and several voters’ databases were leaked online. The breach, popularly referred to as COMELeak, is now known to be one of the biggest government-related breaches in world history as it involved Read more…
Last week was a busy one for the newly established Department of Information and Communications Technology, as two of its attached agencies organized the first National Data Privacy Summit and the Cybersecurity Summit separately. The National Privacy Commission convened the first ever national data privacy summit on December 5-6, 2016 at Read more…
Last March 2016, the Commission on Elections (COMELEC) fell victim to what is now known as one of the biggest government-related breaches in history. This hack on the COMELEC database leaked the personal information of approximately 55 million registered Filipino voters. The incident soon caused widespread concern and public outrage, prompting FMA Read more…
Photo from the Cebu consultation on the DPA IRR courtesy of: HealthInformatics, Inc. The National Privacy Commission (NPC) has submitted for publication the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) for Republic Act No. 10173, or the Data Privacy Act of 2012. Download a copy of the final version promulgated on 24 Read more…