The Best 5 VPN for the Philippines
Before the passing of the CyberCrime prevention Act in September 2012, the Philippines enjoyed internet freedom at large scale. The Act alarmed human rights activists and organizations of internet freedom (Like Electronic Frontier foundation who named that Act to be ‘a dark day for the Philippines’).
‘Cyber Martial Law’ was the most controversial part of the Act which relates to Section 19, a smear provision which forbids unknown online criticism, giving those who post offensive comments a much bigger sentence than they should get if they committed defamation using more traditional forms of media.
As with legislation such as the not so famous SOPA, this harmless clause allows widespread and subjective limitation of a person’s online freedoms, as it permits the country’s Department of Justice to ban any website they find criminally defamatory. It also allows them to be able to monitor the citizen’s online activities such as Facebook posts, email, video chats and instant messaging without the need for a warrant.
Which VPN Works Best for the Philippines
The Civil rights groups in Philippines have been irritated at the new legislation and started both protest and legal challenges. An anonymous activist group said that the Act will largely end any type of freedom of expression in Philippines. The Act states that it has the power to imprison anyone who performs libel either by comments, written messages, blogs, or posts on websites such as Twitter, Facebook or any other such social media website. The act also got blamed for spoiling many websites in retribution to the law passed in October.
Along with the controversy on the Cybercrime law, the governments heavy impact on issues such as content harmful for minors (adult content), or insulting the country’s law and order in any way, and comments which stir up any trouble have all lead to a big interest in people wanting to use VPN to get the internet freedom they desire.
South East Asia, Singapore and Hong Kong are locations where VPN providers have common servers. The people in Singapore also have restrictions when it comes to internet freedom and censorship issues, but that does not matter to VPN users internationally since Singapore’s retaining lawa are much more minumum. Hong Kong is not that close to the Philippines (which might end up users suffering from lag) but it has very little censorship and no neccessary retention laws. This all makes Hong Kong a great location for VPN servers from Philippines. If you want more information have look at the article on Data retention and VPN logging in Hong Kong. Some VPN providers also have server in Taiwan which is also close to the Philippines and currently has less censorship, making is a good choice for the time.
