Sen. Grace Poe said it is an "insult" to the law's implementation.
"All of us here are playing catch-up with technology. We have to keep updating because it is frustrating, and it is adding insult to injury that a smiling monkey can register a SIM card," she lamented.
"It's looking like what we have now is not really sufficient. We will have to go back to the drawing board," she noted.
This could have been prevented if telcos did not oppose including facial recognition technology in the SIM Registration Act's implementing rules and regulations, Poe added.
Ariel Tubayan, head of Globe's Policy Division, Corporate and Legal Services Group, reacted to the NBI's video, admitting lapses but denying that telcos were against the idea of using facial recognition technology.
The government should have fully implemented the national ID system for telcos to gain access to the biometrics database to verify registrants' IDs, he noted.
But Sen. Joel Villanueva retorted, "You think your system is working? If... you see this application form of that monkey smiling at you, what the heck are you doing?" Tubayan said their system requires selfie pictures from registrants to verify their ID.
Those who submit fake IDs will be held liable.
Penalties
Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and Sen. She...