Pampanga voters say text blast promoting Marcos Jr., Sara raises privacy concerns
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga—An apparent text blast promoting presidential aspirant Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his running mate, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, has raised data privacy issues among mobile phone subscribers in Pampanga province.
“Ali e sayangan ing boto. Keni naka king sigurado. Marcos (7) ampo Duterte (4) king Mayo 9 (Don’t waste your vote. Go for sure winners. Marcos (7) and Duterte (4) on May 9),” went the text message from 09497513839. The same text message was sent to other recipients beginning Monday.
One of the recipients, Irwin Nucum, countered that on social media with “Para e la masayang ding botu ning mabilug ming pamilya, Leni, Kiko at Tropang Angat ding pilinan mi (So that the votes of our whole family will not be wasted, we are choosing Leni, Kiko and Tropang Angat.”
“I’m wondering how they got all our numbers? Do they have access to the data of all telecoms? Nucum told the INQUIRER. ” Is this not an intrusion into our privacy? Is there no violation of the Data Privacy
Act?”
In a statement, the Robredo Pangilinan People’s Council in Pampanga “vehemently condemns this intrusion into the privacy of each individual.”
“Hindi pa man, ninanakawan na tayo ng mga personal numbers. No one gave permission to share his cellphone number. Some of the text messages randomly come from the following numbers: +639497513839, +639497514241, +639497534942, +639497535682, +639497513242, +639497510486, +639497510791, 09161463381, 09161463053 and many more,” the chapter said.
It called on the National Telecommunications Commission and the National Privacy Commission to “seriously investigate this matter as we strongly adhere to and support the right to privacy of each Kapampangan voter.”
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