Carpio was referring to Dito Telecommunity Corp., a joint venture of local firm Udenna Corp. and China Telecom, to operate cell site towers within military camps.
“Our problem is with the ChinaTel because it is a state-owned company of the People’s Republic of China,” Carpio said in a statement in reaction to reports that Dito Telecom agreed to pay the Armed Forces of the Philippines in cash to set up cell sites in military properties.
The former magistrate pointed out that China has a law that any Chinese citizen or corporation must cooperate with the state intelligence services of China.
“They are bound to give any information that they have to the Chinese intelligence agencies. This is a problem because among the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, and if you ask the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, they all have agreed to ban Huawei because of the Chinese law,” Carpio said.
Furthermore, Carpio said that under the same Chinese law, all Chinese companies and citizens are mandated to disclose to their intelligence services any information required by the intelligence service.
“That is a problem if the Philippines is allowing ChinaTel to install telecom equipment in military camps and the fact that we have a conflict with China. China is stealing territories such as the West Philippine Sea and our maritime zones. We do not have that problem with Globe, PLDT, or with the Indonesians because we do not have territorial disputes with them,” he said.
Even with the reports that Dito is tapping an American cybersecurity company to make sure there would be no breach on national security, Carpio said the issue is “complicated and technical” beyond the capability of simple cybersecurity firms.
“This is very technical because the backdoors and the spyware can be embedded in the chips and they can be embedded in the software and the software then changes. So, we have a big problem just keeping up with all of these developments. These backdoors are very complicated now and only state agencies can afford to develop this kind of backdoors and spyware. You can rely on McAfee, you can rely on other security services, but they are not that highly skilled when dealing with state-developed spyware,” he said.
In a recent statement, Dito Telecom said it plans to install 880 cellular towers across Mindanao, including 237 in Davao City, the hometown of its owner Dennis A. Uy. Uy was one of the biggest donors of President Duterte when the latter ran for president in 2016.
The company’s chief technology officer, Rodolfo D. Santiago, said they are aiming to have these infrastructures in place in time for their March 2021 commercial launch.
At least 79 towers in Davao City “are already fully mobilized,” according to Santiago, a retired military general.
“So, this is unique to Ditto and ChinaTel. We have to be very careful because we are fighting to preserve our territorial maritime zones in the West Philippine Sea and China is encroaching on our territory maritime zones,” the retired SC justice said.
by Roy Mabasa|MB
Source: Peso Economics
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