De Lima bill wants nat’l storage of evidence from CCTV cameras

Senator Leila De Lima. INQUIRER/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

Senator Leila de Lima has filed Senate Bill No. 1364, which seeks to protect data from recorded closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras as possible leads and evidence in the investigation and prosecution of crimes in the country.

“Criminality is an ever-present threat to our way of life. It requires from us unwavering vigilance. As a means to continuously monitor our surroundings and protect ourselves from criminal elements, we have embraced the tools on modern technology,” De Lima said in a statement.

She said that even business establishments are required to install CCTV cameras before they can be issued with license to operate.

“However, it was also shown that the videos recorded from security cameras are in danger of being destroyed by criminal elements who seek to remove any evidences of their participation in the crime,” De Lima noted.

She then cited the murder of late of the late Albuera Mayor Rolando Espinosa while inside his detention cell, and the involvement of an RCBC branch to move stolen money from the Bangladesh Bank.

De Lima said that when both the government and private offices fail to keep the recorded data, the State should help shoulder the responsibility.

“It is incumbent upon us to enact a law to preserve the recorded video as soon as an incident within the vicinity of the security camera is identified,” the senator said.

“As government offices and private establishments are usually unable to store recorded data for a long time, it is prudent that the data, which can be used as evidence for criminal prosecution, be stored in a nationally maintained redundant storage system,” she added.

She also pointed out that both the Espinosa and RCBC cases involve “highly-suspicious disappearances of CCTV footages.”

READ: NBI: Mayor Espinosa was murdered, defenseless | Broken CCTV cameras, fake documents raise doubts on RCBC branch

The SB 1364 also aims to permit the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) to “establish and maintain a registry of all security cameras owned and operated by government offices and covered private establishments.”

“The DILG and NICA shall institute measures to preserve the confidentiality of this registry,” she added.

Under the measure, any person who willfully or through reckless imprudence destroys recorded data required by the measure to be preserved shall be penalized between six months to 12 years or a fine between P50,000 and P100,000 or both. JE