Last 02 March 2009, the Court of Appeals (CA) denied businessman Jose “Joey” de Venecia III’s petition for the issuance of a writ of habeas data, which sought to stop military and police authorities from allegedly conducting surveillance and wiretapping activities against him.

The writ of habeas data is a remedy available to any person whose right to privacy in life, liberty or security is violated or threatened by an unlawful act or omission of a public official or employee, or of a private individual or entity engaged in the gathering, collecting or storing of data or information regarding the person, family, home and correspondence of the aggrieved party.

In a 19-page decision penned by Associate Justice Monina Arevalo-Zeñarosa, the appellate court declared that de Venecia III, son of former House Speaker Jose de Venecia, failed to substantially prove his allegations that the respondents - Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., former AFP Chief of Staff; the ISAFP; Director General Avelino Razon Jr., former PNP Chief; Benjamin Abalos, former COMELEC Chair; and Senator Juan Ponce Enrile - violated his right to privacy and that his claim was based “on pure speculations and conjecture.”

“The meat of petitioner’s cause of action against respondents rests on the charge of wiretapping of his personal and private communications, particularly telephone conversations. In our best light, however, we see the allegation totally unsupported by evidence and brimming with petitioner’s self-serving and unsubstantiated imputations, based on hearsay and general assumptions,” the CA noted.

In his petition, de Venecia alleged that he received reliable information that military and police intelligence agents were monitoring his movements and tapping his private conversations. He added that in February 2008, he received information on the supposed wiretapped telephone conversation between him and Rodolfo Noel Lozada, another key witness against the controversial national broadband- network deal of the government with China’s ZTE Co., in the Senate investigation that was uploaded in YouTube, a popular Internet web site.

During the Senate investigation, the issue on wiretapping was again brought up in the course of questioning, with Senator Enrile threatening to broadcast recordings of wiretapped conversations between him and Lozada and several other persons. De Venecia insisted that Enrile violated his constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy when the latter disclosed his conversations with other persons in connection with the NBN-ZTE deal.

As to the former election chair, de Venecia alleged that Abalos admitted in one of their conversations that he has transcripts of the tapped conversation and that the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) and the National Police were monitoring his movements and tapping his private conversations.

The Supreme Court where the petition was initially filed, issued a writ of habeas corpus and at the same time referred the petition to the CA, which ordered the respondents to answer the allegations.

However, the CA said it cannot grant de Venecia’s petition because he failed to offer other evidence aside from his judicial affidavit narrating the incident. It also held that the release of his conversations on the NBN-ZTE deal on the Internet, although circumstantial, cannot bolster his claim of wiretapping since he could not categorically say that the voices in the said recording are his and Lozada’s.

“An accusation based on ‘reliable information,’ absent any other proof to support the same, cannot be given any probative value. It is an easy and convenient, but weightless, assumption,” the decision said.

The case was handled for OSG by Assistant Solicitor General Amparo M. Cabotaje-Tang and Associate Solicitors Blessilda B. Abad-Gamo and Veronica P. Inoturan.(By: Mark Kristopher Tolentino, OSG Web Team)