January 14, 1997

It would be immoral to implement a national ID system without the informed and reflected consent of the citizenry.

Clearly, this consent has not been attained.

The national ID project that has been long proposed by the incumbent President and has been consistently rejected by the democratic legislature should now not be forced on the people by a mere administrative order (A.O. 308). An administrative order only implements the people’s will expressed through an existing law. Implementation of an ID system through an administrative order without the requisite law is an authoritarian, abusive, and unconstitutional exercise of executive power.

A national ID system is not just a matter of pieces of paper pasted up with smiling faces. It is rather about numbers and ciphers connecting Filipino individuals to important computer data files on those Filipinos’ lives. While such a system can indeed help simplify access of citizens to some types of basic services, too many questions about IDs linked to computerized data files remain dangerously unanswered. Unanswered is what data must be individually revealed through such an ID system; unanswered is who have access to revealed data. Unanswered is where private records must yield to public scrutiny; where public transparency must respect individual privacy. Unanswered is who can access centralized data, and how can such data can be protected from abuse. For centralized data is controlled data, just a step away from manipulated data. Data abused is privacy invaded, or truth falsified. Such is the fodder of fraud, and the contrivance of usurpers of democratic power.

Unanswered, indeed, is what this national ID system is really for. On the one hand, it is so necessary that the Executive has moved to institutionalize it nationally through a mere administrative order; on the other hand, it is so unnecessary that it is being described as purely voluntary. But if it is purely voluntary, and not compulsory, how can it be an effective measure of national security? Or national crime prevention? And for such an unimportant, unnecessary, voluntary and incomprehensible project, how can the government wish to spend two billion pesos on this?

Unanswered is how this ID system will be administered without becoming just another source of bureaucratic corruption; unanswered is how it will be prevented that an unscrupulous person used all manner of fabricated IDs or falsified ID data to take advantage of an honest man with a truthful ID. Especially if it is expected that the ID be a requirement of voting, unanswered is how a non-transparent system of IDs can spawn anything but another fraudulent election.

A project pushed in the face of so many unanswered questions can only be sinister.

In sum, a national ID system, morally implemented, needs the democratic consent of the people once their questions have been satisfactorily answered. Short of this consent, all obligation imposed on the people can be considered merely voluntary — groundless.

(Sgd.) + JAIME L. CARDINAL SIN, D.D.

Archbishop of Manila