National Privacy Commission probing loss of amnesty papers

The National Privacy Commission (NPC) is trying to trace the steps that led to the loss of more than 200 amnesty documents, including that of Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, a move which could call for an investigation.

NPC Commissioner Raymund Liboro told reporters that the NPC looked into the issue after reports came out that more documents were missing.

The NPC met with the Department of National Defense (DND) on Tuesday last week, but the DND sent just a deputy protection officer.

Risks

He said the NPC now had to determine the “life cycle” of the data in a bid to retrace how the loss happened and who could be held accountable.

“We called DND. There could now be, if indeed many of these documents are lost, an obvious risk to the freedom or autonomy of persons,” he said.

“In this case, we are in the data gathering stage. There is no investigation yet,” Liboro said.

He said “we could get a better grasp of this case” in the coming days.

Liboro said the agency volunteered to look into cases that affected large numbers of people.

Who has access?

“When it’s large scale, nobody would rise up to large companies like Facebook, Uber, so we take it up for them,” Liboro said.

At first, it was only a question of the whereabouts of Trillanes’ missing application form. Now, the same question is asked about the 277 amnesty applications, which the DND claimed earlier this month to be also missing.

“We need to reconstruct the process. Who is actually the controller of the data in this situation?” Liboro said.

Trillanes, a former military rebel, applied for amnesty on Jan. 5, 2011, together with other military mutineers who tried to overthrow the Arroyo administration in 2003, 2006 and 2007.

Their applications were approved three weeks later and the coup d’etat and rebellion charges that had been brought against them were dismissed by the courts.

What happened to Trillanes’ application form is still a mystery, but its loss became the basis of President Rodrigo Duterte’s Proclamation No. 572, revoking the amnesty granted to his fiercest critic in the Senate.

The President also ordered the senator’s arrest and the revival of the charges against him on the grounds that he failed to file an application for amnesty and acknowledge guilt.