The Makabayan bloc of the House of Representatives on Thursday sought a congressional investigation into the reported hacking and data leakage of personal information from the database of government agencies.
In filing House Resolution 1610, the bloc’s members, Party-list Reps. Raoul Manuel of Kabataan, France Castro of ACT Teachers, and Arlene Brosas of Gabriela stressed the need to address the problem and provide adequate protection for the data of Filipinos.
“The reported data breach necessitates urgent investigation and action as it not only jeopardizes the personal data of individuals affected but also ensures data privacy and security is paramount in maintaining public trust and protecting national security mandated by these government agencies,” the resolution read.
Citing the Kaspersky Security Network (KSN), a global cyber security firm, disclosed that the Philippines ranked fourth globally and first in Southeast Asia as the most targeted by web threats in 2023, the bloc stated in the resolution.
They also noted the data breach in early 2023 involving 817.54 gigabytes of records belonging to both applicants and employers across government agencies including the Philippine National Police, National Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Internal Revenue, and Special Action Force.
It also took note of the hacking of the Facebook account of the
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in Central Visayas, the Medusa ransomware attack on the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth), the data breach in the Community-Based Monitoring System of the PSA, the spike of attacks on the website of the Senate, among others.
Given these, the Makabayan Bloc said “the reported data breach necessitates urgent investigation and action as it not only jeopardizes the personal data of individuals affected but also ensures data privacy and security is paramount in maintaining public trust and protecting national security mandated by these government agencies.”
“… be it resolved that the House of Representatives conduct an investigation into the reported data breach incidents which have caused violations of the Data Privacy Act, Cybercrime Prevention Act and other pertinent laws caused by various hackers and perpetrators,” the resolution read.