Wiretap bill seen to boost fight vs drug dealers

Iligan City Rep. Vicente Belmonte said on Saturday he was confident a new bill allowing the police to eavesdrop on phone conversations of illegal drug dealers would go a long way in ending the worsening narcotics problem in the country.

Belmonte, chair of the House committee on dangerous drugs, said authorizing wiretapping of suspected drug pushers would allow authorities to pin down the drug lords, including those still operating while detained in the New Bilibid Prison (NBP).

“The drug trade has become so bad that drug lords continue to run their operations even inside jail using their mobile phones. Wiretapping them will allow the authorities to pin them down and take down their operations permanently,” Belmonte said in a phone interview.

Belmonte’s committee recently approved House Bill No. 5839, which amends Republic Act No. 4200 or the anti-wiretapping law, to include drug dealing among the criminal activities that police could legally snoop on over phone lines with a court order.

At present, wiretapping is illegal unless it is meant to counteract treason, rebellion, sedition or kidnapping activities.

Belmonte expressed confidence the bill would be approved in plenary by October. He said the Senate, led by Sen. Grace Poe who chairs the committee on dangerous drugs, would likely pass a counterpart bill filed by Sen. Gringo Honasan soon. The Senate had approved a similar bill in the previous Congress.

Belmonte said the illegal drugs trade was arguably the biggest menace to society, noting that nearly half or 40,000 of the 88,000 inmates in the NBP were there on drug related cases.

Belmonte said the court system cannot cope with the drug scourge as less than a third of all drug cases lead to a conviction.

“More than 60 percent of drug cases are dismissed mainly due to a technicality. Allowing wiretapping of drug deals will provide strong evidence to stop these operations,” he said. Gil C. Cabacungan