The Philippine government and Meta Platforms Inc. have agreed to form a technical working group covering identity verification and online safety on Meta’s platforms, following a meeting between Philippine officials and Meta executives in Singapore last week.
The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) said Saturday that one strand of the planned cooperation involves integrating Meta’s user-verification process with the Philippine Identification System (PhilSys), the government’s national ID database managed by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). CICC Executive Director Undersecretary Renato Paraiso said the arrangement would allow Meta to confirm whether a submitted identification or reference number matches PSA records, without the agency releasing any of the underlying personal information tied to that number.
“We are not giving Meta access to the information contained in our database. The purpose is simply to verify, while the personal data remains with the government. We want stronger accountability online, but we also want to make sure that privacy is fully protected,” Paraiso said in a statement.
Under the proposed setup, Meta would query the PSA through an application programming interface (API) whenever it needs to confirm a user’s identity. The PSA would return only a match or non-match result, rather than the name, birth date, or other biometric details held in the National ID database.
The CICC said the integration is being weighed as part of efforts to strengthen age and identity verification on Meta’s platforms, particularly for Filipino users, and to address concerns over minors’ exposure to inappropriate content and the use of anonymous accounts for fraud or other malicious activity.
According to a separate report by Technobaboy, the technical working group is expected to begin work in mid-September and will include, alongside Meta, the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), the National Privacy Commission (NPC), the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), the Philippine National Police (PNP), the Department of Education (DepEd), and the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). The group is tasked with working out technical details and privacy safeguards before any rollout.
The verification proposal is one part of a broader set of commitments reached during talks between Philippine officials and Meta representatives at the company’s Asia-Pacific offices in Singapore. DICT Secretary Henry Aguda led the Philippine delegation, which also included NBI Director Melvin Matibag, NTC Chairperson Ella Blanca Lopez, and Paraiso. Meta was represented by Sarim Aziz, director for public policy in Southeast Asia, and Gio Tiongson, head of public policy in the Philippines.
Beyond the ID-verification discussion, both sides agreed to form a separate technical working group focused on improving coordination and response times on harmful content, threats of violence, and child sexual abuse and exploitation material (CSAEM) on Facebook and Instagram. Meta committed to designating a point of contact for Philippine authorities, cooperating with lawful requests for account records subject to its terms of service and applicable law, and providing technical assistance in combating CSAEM.
The talks followed repeated complaints from the DICT and the CICC that Meta had been difficult to reach on urgent matters because the company does not maintain a full-fledged office in the Philippines.
“The commitments made today are a starting point. The responsibility now is to turn them into action and to ensure that online threats are addressed before they become real-world harm,” Aguda said.
Meta representatives are expected to visit Manila to formalize the cooperation framework and the commitments made in Singapore, though the DICT has not specified a date.
