THE CYBERCRIME Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) on Thursday said it will study privacy safeguards that are to be implemented for a proposed online age verification system for social media and online gaming platforms, citing that stakeholders pressed for measures protecting children without unnecessarily revealing their identities.
In a statement, the CICC said this recommendation was raised at a CICC town hall meeting on Wednesday regarding online child safety.
During the town hall, which consisted of representatives from government agencies, organizations and digital safety advocates, participants asserted that “age assurance should determine whether a user belongs to a particular age group while limiting the personal information that would have to be disclosed.”
The event came ahead of the formation of a technical working group (TWG) with Meta and Roblox this month to craft stricter directives against online child grooming, fraud and anonymous malicious activities.
“Privacy does not equate to identifiability. In the discussion of child safety, we also have to acknowledge the fact that we must also go after the predators, we must also go after the groomers, and in order for that to happen, we need to identify them,” CICC Undersecretary Renato Paraiso stated.
“Privacy, pseudonyms should not be taken away, but we must identify threat actors,” Paraiso added.
The CICC chief’s comments were in response to concerns stressing that age verification should not be confused with identity verification.
He added that recommendations raised during the stakeholder consultation will be tackled by the TWG, which will study the legal, due process, data minimization and technical architecture of the proposed system.
Meanwhile, the Philippine Statistics Authority cited the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) as a possible tool for age assurance but clarified that its use “should not result in unnecessary disclosure of personal information.”
“The important point that we’d like to emphasize is that age verification should not mean requiring a child to disclose more personal information than necessary,” Assistant National Statistician Henedine Palabras said.
