Wiretapping can help catch more drug lords

A legal flaw seemingly set a favorable climate for drug trafficking to flourish in the Philippines. Republic Act No. 4200, or the Anti-Wiretapping Law enacted in 1965, frustrates police and prosecutors in convicting drug traffickers by limiting evidence that can pin them down.

The law proscribes the use of secretly recorded telephone conversation allowed by courts as evidence in criminal trials. The law allows wiretapping for cases of treason, espionage, rebellion or sedition, and kidnapping. The 1987 Constitution, meanwhile, provides that wiretapped communications not ordered by a court are inadmissible evidence.

Thus, the 51 years that this law has been existing saw drug lords who could not be put behind bars easily for lack of hard evidence and bred a generation of shabu customers who drove crime rates up.

Government needs all tactics and tools in its war on drugs which includes dismantling the drug trade operation run by convicted drug lords from inside the New Bilibid Prisons. So Senators Panfilo Lacson, Gregorio Honasan II, Grace Poe, Juan Edgardo Angara are right in proposing the amendment of RA 4200 to allow the use of wiretapping and modern communications equipment (other than the already obsolete telephone) in surveillance operations against suspected drug traffickers, pushers and the like.

The other exemptions in the proposed Senate bills amending the Anti-Wiretapping Law could be graft and corruption and terrorism cases.

The United States aggressively uses legal wiretapping in catching and prosecuting corrupt state governors and mayors and radicalized citizens plotting terrorist attacks on American soil.

Its National Security Agency listens to more than 1 billion phone calls each day and scans internet data to detect potential terrorist attacks.

Such vigilance aims to prevent a repeat of 9/11 that killed nearly 3,000 people and injured 6,000 others in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The intelligence agencies of Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom have similar legal wiretapping programs.

With Duterte waging another war against corruption in government and terrorism, wiretapping suspected criminals not only prevents the commission of crime but also sends crooks and killers to the lam for good. But there should be safeguards to prevent such tool from being abused like invading privacy and silencing  political dissent or free speech.

—JESSICA VILLENA, [email protected]