[News] Inside the Video Surveillance Program IBM Built for Philippine Strongman Rodrigo Duterte

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://theintercept.com/2019/03/20/rodrigo-duterte-ibm-surveillance/


  Inside the Video Surveillance Program IBM Built for Philippine
  Strongman Rodrigo Duterte

George Joseph - March 20, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Jaypee Larosa was_ standing in front of an internet cafe in Davao City, 
a metropolitan hub on the Philippine island of Mindanao, when three men 
in dark jackets pulled up on a motorcycle and opened fire. That summer 
evening, Larosa, 20, was killed. After the shooting, according to 
witnesses 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao>, 
one of the men reportedly removed Larosa’s baseball cap and said, “Son 
of a bitch. This is not the one.” Then they drove off.

Larosa’s murder, on July 17, 2008, was one of hundreds 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao> of 
extrajudicial killings carried out in Davao City, now a city of 1.6 
million, while Rodrigo Duterte, now president of the Philippines, was 
mayor there. Years before launching his notorious, bloody 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/dutertes-philippines-drug-war-death-toll-rises-above-5000> “drug 
war 
<https://www.philstar.com/pilipino-star-ngayon/bansa/2016/10/12/1632667/ejk-inamin-ni-digong>” 
across the country, Duterte presided over similar tactics at the local 
level. During his tenure as mayor, according to a 2009 investigation 
<https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/philippines0409webwcover_0.pdf> by 
Human Rights Watch, death squads assassinated street children, drug 
dealers, and petty criminals; in some cases, researchers found evidence 
of the complicity or direct involvement of government officials and police.

Duterte has consistently denied any connection to this campaign of 
killings, but at times, his support for 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/297514/what-went-before-the-davao-death-squad> the 
violence was barely concealed. As mayor, Duterte would publicly announce 
the names or locations of “criminals,” and some of them would later 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao> be 
killed, according to human rights groups and local newspapers 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/735457/davao-drug-suspect-dead-after-duterte-ultimatum>. 
Although it stopped short of accusing Duterte himself of misconduct or 
direct involvement, the Philippines’ Office of the Ombudsman partially 
acknowledged 
<https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/137446-davao-death-squad-rodrigo-duterte-chr-resolution> in 
2012 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/169081/21-pnp-officers-fined-for-2005-2008-spate-of-killings-in-davao-city> the 
police’s role in tolerating the killings, finding that 21 Davao City 
police officials and officers were “remiss in their duty” for failing to 
solve them.

But this potential complicity in human rights violations did not stop 
IBM from agreeing to provide surveillance technology to law enforcement 
in Davao City. On June 27, 2012 
<https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/38152.wss>, three years 
after the devastating Human Rights Watch report, IBM issued a short news 
release announcing an agreement with Davao to upgrade its police command 
center in order to “further enhance public safety operations in the 
city.” IBM’s installation, known as the Intelligent Operations Center, 
promised <https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/38152.wss> to 
enhance authorities’ ability to monitor residents in real time with 
cutting-edge video analytics, multichannel communications technology, 
and GPS-enabled patrol vehicles. Less than two months later, the 
Philippine Commission on Human Rights published 
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/08/16/philippines-prosecute-officials-death-squad-killings> a 
resolution condemning Davao authorities for fostering a “climate of 
impunity” with regard to the killings, recommending that the National 
Bureau of Investigation undertake an impartial investigation into 
potential obstruction of justice by local police officials. (Duterte has 
recently condemned 
<https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/18/philippines-dutertes-drug-war-claims-12000-lives> the 
commission, questioning its motives and suggesting that it should be 
abolished.)

The 2012 IBM deal was signed by Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, Sara 
Duterte, who was Davao City’s nominal 
<https://www.ft.com/content/9d6225dc-e805-11e6-967b-c88452263daf> mayor 
at the time, while her term-limited 
<https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rodrigo-Duterte> father served as vice 
mayor; under Sara Duterte, the killings continued 
<http://www.cbcpnews.com/cbcpnews/?p=76531>. The system, according to 
local news reports, was deployed in June 2013 
<https://durianburgdavao.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/duterte-credits-inday-sara-for-davao-citys-james-bond-gadgets/>, 
just as Rodrigo Duterte was about to return to the mayoral seat he had 
already held for nearly two decades. The police command center, Sara 
Duterte told the Durian Post, “is now infused with IBM’s IOC 
technology,” allowing police to “shift from responding to critical 
events to anticipating and preventing them.”

While The Intercept and Type Investigations were unable to locate any 
reference to Davao’s death squads in IBM’s public corporate documents 
about the program, a 2014 company overview 
<https://www.scribd.com/document/251701696/IBM-Smarter-Cities-Overview-Cities-must-become-smarter> of 
the installation made clear that IBM knew “illegal drugs,” predictive 
policing, and crime suppression were among Davao City security forces’ 
“priority areas.” From 2013 through late 2016, when one Davao security 
official estimated the IBM program stopped being in active use, Filipino 
human rights activists who worked closely with the Commission on Human 
Rights claimed to have documented 
<http://www.cbcpnews.com/cbcpnews/?p=76531> at least 213 extrajudicial 
killings carried out by Davao death squads.

Davao City officials did not respond to queries related to IBM’s video 
surveillance system or its potential role in extrajudicial killing 
operations during its run. But three police and city security officials 
interviewed in Davao City last year said the program had strengthened 
police video monitoring capabilities, which they said had proved useful 
in Davao’s controversial war on so-called drug syndicates 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDwOGX5F4Mw>. That war, human rights 
reports 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao> and 
former death squad participants 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/882306/lascanas-drug-lords-go-to-davao-to-lie-low> have 
shown, often targeted low-level drug users and peddlers, rather than 
major traffickers.

Amado Picardal, a former spokesperson of the Coalition Against Summary 
Executions, a Davao-based human rights group, called IBM’s work 
“unethical,” given that some of the killings had been linked to 
Duterte’s police in the years before its deal with Davao City.

IBM declined to respond to queries about its human rights record in 
Davao City. IBM spokesperson Edward Barbini briefly noted that the 
company “no longer supplies technology to the Intelligent Operations 
Center in Davao, and has not done so since 2012,” though he declined to 
clarify whether IBM serviced the technology after that point, and IBM’s 
public filings mention the program as ongoing after that date. “The 
Philippines city of Davao’s 1.5 million citizens will be the first in 
Asia to benefit from an Intelligent Operations Center,” an April 3, 
2013, IBM disclosure reads. “A new early warning system will monitor key 
risk indicators so agencies can take quick action before situations 
escalate.”

In the years since the IBM program was phased out, Philippine police 
interest in cutting-edge surveillance infrastructure has hardly waned. 
National authorities are now looking to deploy real-time facial 
recognition across the country, in a project called “Safe Philippines,” 
and have considered technology from a variety of international vendors, 
including the Chinese telecom Huawei.

In December, a local newspaper reported 
<https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/12/13/1876639/dilg-chinese-firm-install-p20-billion-cctv-network> that 
the Philippines had secured a 20 billion-peso loan for the installation 
of thousands of surveillance cameras across Davao City and metro Manila 
in collaboration with a Chinese firm, an installation that would 
reportedly include a national command center and feature facial and 
vehicle recognition software. In a January interview on Filipino 
television, Epimaco Densing III, undersecretary of the Department of the 
Interior and Local Government, said 
<https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/01/31/19/dilg-safe-philippines-can-help-thwart-another-jolo-attack> that 
a goal of the project is to detect the faces of terrorist suspects and 
prevent crimes before they take place.

Filipino activists worry that such capabilities could facilitate human 
rights violations. Over the last three years, parts of the country have 
been under temporary declarations 
<https://www.manilatimes.net/house-ready-to-extend-martial-law-if-duterte-wants-it/436220/> of 
martial law, and Duterte’s “war on drugs” has left at least 5,000 and 
possibly as many as 27,000 dead (police and human rights groups’ 
estimates vary widely 
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/dutertes-philippines-drug-war-death-toll-rises-above-5000>). 
Those killed have included anti-Duterte activists 
<https://www.amnesty.org.au/philippines-political-human-rights-activists-killed-impunity/>, 
elected officials 
<http://time.com/5330071/philippines-mayors-political-assassination-duterte/>, 
and outspoken Catholic priests 
<https://www.rappler.com/nation/205165-catholics-outrage-filipino-priests-killings>. 
Currently, Duterte is campaigning to modify the constitution, a move 
that could 
<https://www.cfr.org/blog/implications-dutertes-proposed-constitutional-changes> 
afford powers 
<https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/2154392/draft-constitution-proposes-giving-philippine-president> to 
the executive to further the suppression of political opponents.


      Surveillance Capabilities in Davao

In June 2012, Mayor Sara Duterte announced 
<https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/city-of-davao-and-ibm-collaborate-to-build-a-smarter-city-160480725.html> a 
128 million-peso deal, worth just over $3 million at the time, with IBM 
to improve its real-time monitoring capabilities. The announcement 
promised to “scale up” Davao’s Public Safety and Security Command 
Center, or PSSCC, with improved communications and surveillance technology.

Sayaji Shinde, a former IBM sales leader who says he was part of the 
team that secured the command center deal, recalls that his team was 
eager to partner with the Duterte administration. “If you look at the 
Dutertes as such, they focus a lot on public-sector security,” said 
Shinde. “And I think that is one of the drivers, for even us, to go and 
spend our time and advise them because we saw that they are really keen 
to ensure that the city become more safer.”

To seal the deal, Shinde said, IBM pointed to the international 
recognition that such a project would bring Davao. “That is precisely 
what we sold them: ‘You know if you do this, work with us, and it 
becomes first of its kind, then this will be highlighted globally.’”

In the initial phase of the project, IBM mapped Davao’s police cameras 
onto a geographic information system, allowing operators to quickly 
access camera feeds near locations of interest, Shinde said.

According to Shinde, the rollout also featured a multichannel 
communications system, allowing police, traffic, and defense personnel 
to communicate with one another. It also included video analytics 
technology that automatically tagged objects captured on camera, like 
cars and people, by their physical attributes. The tags included the 
objects’ size, speed, color, trajectory, and direction, according to a 
November 2014 IBM presentation 
<https://www.scribd.com/document/251701696/IBM-Smarter-Cities-Overview-Cities-must-become-smarter> to 
the Asian Development Bank, allowing command center operators to comb 
through camera footage in search of suspects by their descriptions. (IBM 
had refined these kinds of surveillance capabilities using secret access 
to New York Police Department camera footage 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/09/06/nypd-surveillance-camera-skin-tone-search/>, 
as The Intercept and Type Investigations reported in September.)

“That was probably the first-ever video analytics surveillance that was 
done in Asia,” said Shinde, noting that the system could be used in the 
wake of robberies or murders to track a suspect’s car before and after a 
crime. The software was “very user-friendly,” he noted, so Davao 
security officials at the command center could easily have become 
competent in the program’s object search capabilities.

The 2014 IBM presentation on its Davao project also mentions a tool 
known as “Face Capture,” which boxes out images of faces in real time 
and stores them for retroactive analysis 
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByBx73lqSsgjZGd1cDIySk9fOGM/view?usp=sharing>. 
In a recent interview, Emmanuel Jaldon, head of Davao City’s 911 Center, 
claimed that this functionality was planned but never formally deployed. 
Barbini also claims that IBM “never supplied facial recognition 
capability for the center.” And Shinde, who left IBM in 2014, said that 
Face Capture was not integrated while he was there during the first 
phase of the Davao project. But a February 2015 promotional video for 
the PSSCC, highlighting the command center’s monitoring capabilities and 
ability to “suppress all forms of criminalities,” features a clip of 
IBM’s Face Capture interface in action, gathering facial images from 
pedestrians on the streets of Davao City. Footage of what appears to be 
the IBM Davao City dashboard, pictured above, shows the software boxing 
out and collecting facial images as people walked past street cameras.

The program also helped authorities monitor “crowd behavior” and 
instances of “loitering” — a crime 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-crime/thousands-of-philippine-poor-nabbed-in-dutertes-latest-war-on-loitering-idUSKBN1KE0MT> that 
Duterte has cracked down on nationally as president — according to the 
2014 IBM presentation 
<https://www.scribd.com/document/251701696/IBM-Smarter-Cities-Overview-Cities-must-become-smarter>.


      IBM’s Technology in Duterte’s War on Crime

When asked what assurances he was given about how the surveillance 
program would be used, Shinde defended IBM’s sale, saying that it was 
intended for legitimate public safety activities, such as responding to 
fires. “That particular implementation was not meant to track people,” 
he said. “It was meant to track the incidents and faster responses to 
those incidences.”

But in interviews in the command center, the nearby 911 center, and 
other locations in Davao City, local law enforcement officials familiar 
with the IBM program told The Intercept and Type Investigations that the 
technology had assisted them in carrying out Duterte’s controversial 
anti-crime agenda.

Manuel Gaerlan, a former regional Philippines National Police chief 
superintendent <https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/1757362>, said the 
command center, which IBM substantially upgraded, functions as a force 
multiplier in counter-drug operations. “It records events so it’s easier 
to identify the perpetrators, then you can go after the member of the 
syndicates,” he said. “If you can see more areas, you can send patrol to 
respond. It’s like putting more men on the ground. And you can put more 
cameras in drug areas.”

Jaldon, the 911 chief, pointed to IBM’s object tagging and search 
feature as the most useful tool the program gave law enforcement in 
counter-drug operations, especially when it came to “backtracking,” or 
investigating incidents after the fact. “After an event, the system 
helps find them quickly, give you awareness,” he said. “It helps in 
investigations to slice and dice by time, color, type of physical 
feature.” Most significantly, he said the program’s real-time alerts 
could also increase authorities’ “awareness of suspects’ presence.”

Antonio Boquiren, a training and research officer at the Davao command 
center, said the video capabilities helped police crack down on 
low-level quality of life violations.

“Whether it’s criminality, smoking, or jaywalking, any violation of 
ordinance is a crime and a police is sent,” he said, laughing. “People 
who smoke complain, ‘How did you catch us before we even lit?’ The 
police officer will point to the CCTV.”

The targeting of petty criminals, gang members, and street children by 
Davao death squads figures prominently in the 2009 Human Rights Watch 
report <https://www.hrw.org/news/2009/07/30/philippine-death-squads>. 
And a 2015 promotional 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZCFc3umCQ> video featuring IBM’s 
technology shows authorities aggressively going after low-level crimes. 
One clip highlights a young man, caught on CCTV, stealing a bag from a 
truck. Later, the narrator notes that the technology gives police faster 
response times and cuts to footage 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGZCFc3umCQ> of police officers chasing 
after a group of people on the street. One then raises his baton as if 
to hit one of them.

A former Philippine Army security consultant with close ties to 
Philippine intelligence, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, 
claimed that IBM’s program assisted police not only in monitoring 
criminal activities, but also in gathering intelligence on the 
activities of the political opposition in Davao. Based on his dealings 
with Davao City law enforcement officials, he said he couldn’t rule out 
that the data feed was implicated in extrajudicial killings.

Even if IBM’s program was solely used to assist in legitimate police 
responses to crime and fires, as Shinde said it was designed to do, 
surveillance researchers point out that it could well have enabled 
extrajudicial killings, simply by helping police capture or monitor 
everyday criminal suspects. The government has long denied the existence 
of police death squads, but in the Dutertes’ Davao, victims of 
extrajudicial killing were sometimes targeted immediately 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao> after 
being released from police custody, and police frequently killed 
suspects during planned raids.

In October 2015, for example, Duterte warned a group of drug dealers on 
a street called Dewey Boulevard that they had 48 hours to leave the city 
or be killed. “If you are into drugs, I’m warning you,” he announced, 
according to local press reports. “I’m giving you 48 hours, 48 hours. If 
I see you there, I’ll have you killed.” Police reportedly monitored 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/735457/davao-drug-suspect-dead-after-duterte-ultimatum> the 
area and relayed that some known dealers had left. But a day after the 
warning, police fatally shot Armanuel Atienza, a 38-year-old community 
leader, claiming 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/735457/davao-drug-suspect-dead-after-duterte-ultimatum> that 
he had resisted arrest during a buy-and-bust operation and that they 
found a handgun and drugs on his person. Such claims are suspect. 
According 
<https://www.rappler.com/nation/146455-highlights-matobato-testimony-davao-death-squad> to 
2016 Senate testimony by Edgar Matobato, who allegedly served as a death 
squad member from 1988 to 2013, Davao police regularly planted guns and 
drugs on suspects after killing them. (Duterte has asserted that he does 
not know Matobato and has implied that he may have committed perjury in 
this testimony. The Duterte administration’s communications office did 
not respond to detailed queries related to the IBM program, or its 
potential role in human rights violations.)

IBM’s object-tagging capability, for example, could have been used to 
locate a suspect by their physical attributes, someone who may then have 
become a target of extrajudicial violence, explains Kade Crockford, a 
technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, 
whose research focuses on police surveillance. “Maybe the system 
identifies three to four people, then law enforcement are sent to find 
those people,” Crockford said. “Maybe that person isn’t executed on the 
spot by law enforcement, but police question him about him and his 
associates; now he and some of the people he named make their way on to 
a list which ends up in the hands of a death squad.”

Social media posts from a PSSCC department head, archived on a local 
blog, suggest that the center, using IBM’s technology, was effective at 
nabbing suspected criminals.

In August 2014, that official claimed that police monitored and caught 
<https://www.coolbuster.net/2014/09/street-kids-steal-davao-multicab-driver-income-video.html> a 
group of street kids stealing from a cab driver “through the 
coordination” of the PSSCC and city police. That December, he claimed 
that the Intelligent Operations Center 
<https://www.coolbuster.net/2014/12/police-intercept-gun-toting-suspect-with-real-life-big-brother-cams.html> was 
a factor in the police surveillance and capture of a man cruising around 
Davao City with a gun.

IBM’s “Face Capture” feature, if deployed, also could have helped 
authorities locate wanted people in near real time — including residents 
on watchlists, according to Crockford. “Imagine a scenario in which 
someone in the police force, who has access to this system and works 
with the local death squad, producing lists of people to be killed,” she 
said. “This technology could help the police leader to ID a person on 
the kill list in real time and then have them deploy the death squads to 
go get them.”

The Davao command center, according to a local news report, did have 
facial recognition capabilities in place by 2014, though the technology 
was not identified with IBM. And according to the 2009 Human Rights 
Watch report, Davao’s death squads were known to rely in part on photos 
of targets on their watchlists.

In August 2016, Artemio Jimenez Jr. 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/816030/village-chair-shot-dead-2-others-wounded-in-davao-city>, 
a neighborhood political leader and vocal supporter of Duterte’s war on 
drugs, turned himself in to Davao City police after apparently 
discovering that he was on a government watchlist of suspected drug 
users, offering to be tested for drugs in order to clear his name. 
Police tested his urine for methamphetamine and cannabinol, according to 
The Inquirer 
<https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/816030/village-chair-shot-dead-2-others-wounded-in-davao-city>/,/ tests 
that came up negative. Nonetheless, the next month, “unidentified 
gunmen” drove up to his car 
<http://mindanaodailymirror.com/barangay-captain-killed-davao-ambush-24697/> and 
fired repeatedly, killing him and wounding 
<https://www.sunstar.com.ph/article/98687> his driver and bodyguard. 
Police claimed that they were investigating, but never announced a 
suspect or motive in the shooting. Nor did they explain how the 
assassins knew Jimenez’s location.


      IBM’s Public Human Rights Commitments

IBM publicly claims to be “committed to high standards of corporate 
responsibility” and to consider the “social concerns” of the communities 
in which it operates. IBM’s Human Rights Statement of Principles 
<https://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/ibm_humanrightsprinciples.html> cites 
a number of international standards, including the U.N. Guiding 
Principles on Business and Human Rights 
<https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf>, 
which calls on corporations to perform due diligence on the “human 
rights context prior to a proposed business activity,” identify “who may 
be affected,” and project “how the proposed activity and associated 
business relationships could have adverse human rights impacts on those 
identified.” These standards also call on companies to proactively track 
potential human rights abuses related to their business activities and 
require “active engagement” in the remediation of any identified abuses.

IBM’s Securities and Exchange Commission 
<https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/51143/000110465913026645/a13-9282_1defa14a.htm> 
documents 
<https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/51143/000110465913015636/a13-6155_18k.htm> and 
annual reports 
<https://www.ibm.com/annualreport/2012/bin/assets/2012_ibm_annual.pdf> between 
2012 and 2016 contain a few scattered mentions of its project in Davao, 
but no discussion of any potential human rights concerns or any 
preventative measures taken by the company. None of IBM’s corporate 
social responsibility 
<https://www.ibm.com/ibm/responsibility/reports/report_downloads.html> reports 
have ever mentioned its collaboration with Duterte in Davao.

Despite reporting by Human Rights Watch and local papers, Shinde claimed 
that the human rights allegations against the Duterte regime were “not 
in the news at all during those days.” There was “nothing said like that 
about him at that time,” he continued, pointing out that IBM contracted 
with Sara Duterte, not her father, who, he said, “didn’t have such a 
kind of record.”

Yet when IBM agreed to work with the Duterte family’s administration in 
2012, his regime’s support of extrajudicial killings in Davao City had 
been well-established; as early as 2009, he had described criminals as 
“a legitimate target for assassination 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao>.” 
In 2012, the year IBM signed the deal with Sara Duterte, local human 
rights activists claimed to have documented 
<http://www.cbcpnews.com/cbcpnews/?p=76531> 61 death squad killings.

According to IBM documents 
<https://www.scribd.com/document/251701696/IBM-Smarter-Cities-Overview-Cities-must-become-smarter> and 
law enforcement officials, the Philippine National Police also received 
information from the surveillance command center. Before the IBM deal 
was signed, the Philippine National Police had also been criticized 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/04/06/you-can-die-any-time/death-squad-killings-mindanao> for 
failing to investigate death squad killings, and since Duterte became 
president, it has played a role 
<https://thediplomat.com/2018/01/the-philippine-national-police-reenters-the-war-on-drugs/> in 
the deadly national “war on drugs.”

“If they had the technology then, I have no doubt that they used it and 
continue to use it to locate the targets for elimination,” said 
Picardal, formerly of the Coalition Against Summary Executions. “And not 
only drug users but human rights defenders, activists, and anyone they 
consider as enemies of the state.”

IBM had to have known about the Dutertes’ track record at the time, said 
a U.S. official who recalled being briefed by IBM about its Davao City 
project. “I can’t see how they wouldn’t have known about it. They have 
local people working for them,” said the official, who requested 
anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on U.S. government matters.

Joshua Franco, head of technology and human rights at Amnesty 
International, noted that Rodrigo Duterte’s record as mayor was so 
well-documented that any company engaging with the Davao police at that 
time would have had a responsibility to investigate and avoid potential 
complicity in human rights violations before signing any agreements.

“There is documentation of the killings, by persons believed to be 
linked to the police, that went on in Davao City while Duterte was 
mayor,” he said. “Human rights organizations have documented that, 
during this period, as many as 1,000 people were killed, including 
street children, people who used and sold drugs, as well as petty 
criminals. Without implementing a rigorous human rights due diligence 
process, companies supplying the local police forces suspected of having 
been involved in the killings with policing equipment and technology may 
have enabled or facilitated the commission of human rights violations.”

Asked about the human rights implications of the surveillance program, 
Philippine law enforcement officials familiar with the IBM system made 
light of such concerns.

“If police do some human rights abuses, who cares?” said one official, 
claiming that such tactics had resulted in significant crime reductions.

Gaerlan, the regional police superintendent, joked about the 
extrajudicial killing of alleged drug lord Melvin Odicta Sr 
<http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2016/08/29/odicta-couple-shot-dead.html>., 
who was shot, according to police, by two “unidentified assailants.” 
Gaerlan’s agency, the Philippine National Police, officially speculated 
<http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2016/08/29/odicta-couple-shot-dead.html> that 
he may have been killed by other drug dealers. But the commander waved 
off that version of events. “He was shot right off the ship,” he said, 
laughing. “He was trying to evade authorities by not coming here on a 
plane. He never holds drugs. You can’t catch him, but he was killed. Not 
by anyone in uniform! It was just some vigilantes, but they weren’t in 
uniform!”

Legal protections for the accused, such as due process, may be good in 
theory, argued Boquiren, the PSSCC officer, but they aren’t practical 
because of a court system he characterized as inefficient and corrupt. 
“Due process is good on the point of lawyers, but if we are talking 
about the criminal justice system, it’s weak. Even clear-cut cases of 
murder take years, witnesses die, so something is wrong,” he said.

“If people don’t have discipline, they don’t obey,” he continued. “But 
if there is fear, they will obey.”


      Duterte’s Mass Surveillance Plans

In November, Jaldon said that IBM’s surveillance program was no longer 
active in Davao. He said that authorities switched over to an in-house 
software system in 2016. Still, he and Boquiren said that the urban 
surveillance center model IBM helped build in Davao City has served as 
an inspiration for the Duterte administration. “Within the next few 
years, the president will have replicated our system everywhere,” 
Boquiren said last January. “Every time he goes somewhere, he keeps 
telling local leaders, go to Davao City and replicate the PSSCC.”

Duterte’s plan is to expand and unify public safety and emergency 
response centers at a regional and national level in the coming years, 
Jaldon said. “The hard part before was the budget costs, but that won’t 
be a problem anymore with the president prioritizing this.”

Jaldon and Boquiren said national authorities — including Duterte 
himself — are interested in expanding surveillance centers across the 
country and upgrading their video capabilities to include real-time 
facial recognition, which could compare the faces of suspects to facial 
images caught on CCTV.

In February 2018 
<https://www.manilatimes.net/chinas-declared-purpose-change/381241/>, a 
local news report cited anonymous sources indicating that Duterte was 
pursuing a partnership with Huawei, a Chinese telecom firm, to provide 
facial recognition technology, a development Boquiren confirmed at the time.

Then in December 2018, the Philippine legislature 
<https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/12/13/1876639/dilg-chinese-firm-install-p20-billion-cctv-network> learned 
that a different Chinese firm, the state-owned China International 
Telecommunications and Construction Corp., had loaned the Philippines 
Department of the Interior and Local Government 20 billion pesos to 
install 12,000 surveillance cameras across Davao City and metro Manila. 
The “Safe Philippines” infrastructure, according to a report in the 
Philippine Star, will include a national command center and a backup 
data center, equipped with facial and vehicle recognition software. At a 
Senate hearing, Sen. Ralph Recto raised concerns about China’s 
involvement in the project, and officials from the national Department 
of Information and Communications Technology testified that they had not 
been consulted about the deal.

Several other Chinese firms had originally been proposed by the Chinese 
Embassy for the project, including Huawei. But, according to a January 
2019 Senate resolution 
<http://senate.gov.ph/lisdata/2932525926!.pdf> introduced by 
Recto/,/ Huawei was slated to become only a major subcontractor as the 
“primary equipment supplier.”

According to Boquiren, Huawei promised that its facial recognition 
product could capture someone “even with an image of the side of their 
face” and “store up to a million faces.” In a November 2018 call, 
Boquiren reiterated that unspecified police authorities were looking at 
Huawei technology, but declined to discuss any additional details, 
citing a lack of technical expertise. Jaldon cautioned that while the 
Chinese firm had “a good system,” authorities were still in the process 
of assessing a variety of facial recognition vendors as part of the 
implementation of the “safe city project” across the country.

The Philippines’ potential collaboration with Chinese firms, which 
resulted from an agreement reached during the visit of Chinese President 
Xi Jinping last November 
<https://www.rappler.com/nation/218831-dilg-china-telecom-affiliate-partnership-video-surveillance-system-philippines>, 
reflects Duterte’s ongoing pivot 
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-11/duterte-s-pivot-to-china-shows-some-signs-of-economic-payoff> to 
China and away from the United States. Huawei, in particular, is alleged 
to have such close ties to the Chinese state that it has been banned 
<https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/2/17310870/pentagon-ban-huawei-zte-phones-retail-stores-military-bases> from 
U.S. government contracts and from providing some security products to 
Australia 
<https://www.cnet.com/news/australia-to-ban-huawei-from-5g-rollout-amid-security-concerns/> for 
fear of backdoor intrusions by Chinese intelligence actors.

The former consultant to the Philippine Army said his understanding is 
that the Safe Philippines installation will be modeled after Chinese 
facial recognition infrastructure, uniting CCTV installations and 
intelligence databases from security agencies across the country into 
one unified system. “The project aims to establish new CCTV networks and 
cascade them with all existing CCTV installations,” he said. “Patterned 
after the Chinese police state, the system is intended to tap databases 
from a variety of agencies of the government and integrate them with the 
data streams from the CCTV networks.”

In a more recent interview, the former consultant said that, given the 
scrutiny Huawei has drawn, the Department of the Interior and Local 
Government may opt for another technology equipment supplier, a claim 
that Densing, the Department of the Interior official, echoed 
<https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/01/31/19/dilg-safe-philippines-can-help-thwart-another-jolo-attack> in 
the January television interview.

Maya Wang, senior researcher on China at Human Rights Watch, said the 
potential adoption of a Chinese-style surveillance infrastructure, 
facilitated by Chinese companies, is very concerning given the “context 
of Duterte’s increasing abuses, drug war, and large-scale extrajudicial 
violence.” But Wang cautioned that the costs and expertise required for 
such systems are not easily replicable. The Philippine government could 
potentially “replicate one or some of the systems, but not all of the 
overlapping, multitiered mass surveillance systems seen in China,” she said.

-- 
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