Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Implementation Scenario of Cyber Crime Law

Eric Yee Threat
The Anti-Cyber Crime Act was just enacted. The Information and Communications Technology Office under the Department of Science and Technology (ICTO-DOST) will start drafting the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) soon. There were arguments for and against its enactment, but how dangerous is it really for an average blogger or a local forumer?

The answer could lie on the way American authorities arrested 21-year old Eric Lee recently for a boneheaded decision to post about killing children. The details were sketchy but some sources said that Yee was accused of making his comments underneath an ESPN article about Lebron James new exorbitantly prices sneakers (US$ 180.00 to US$ 315.00 for a pair).

There are conflicting information on what did Yee really say, but given the nature of his comments and his proximity to a local elementary and middle school and the fact that he had a cache of guns, authorities wasted no time in arresting the man.

A report from the Associated Press states:
An employee at ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., notified local police the same day and they linked the posting to Yee's home in Santa Clarita in northern Los Angeles County. Sheriff's investigators said they were contacted Sunday and began surveillance on the home where Yee, 21, lives with his parents until a search warrant was obtained.

Experts said the bail amount was very high for a person suspected of making terrorist threats.

"To put it in perspective, $US 1 million is the presumptive bail for murder," said Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a former federal public defender who is not involved in the case.
Again, there are no validated proof about the comments made by Yee or if this was an isolated incident, or the latest in a series of crackdowns made by ESPN that seems to be more frequent recently. However, it's worth repeating that the same common sense somebody might use when walking in a dimly lit alley should have been adopted by Yee while pretending to be a tough dude in comment sections that can reach thousands.

Now, only if the authorities would just do the same to the pedophiles in black robes who rapes children in the name of their holy religion and set the bail to US$ 5 million, innocent lives would have been spared.

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