Leaders of the House of Representatives are seeking an investigation into a deepfake video showing President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. purportedly issuing an order to soldiers.
“This matter involves national security and the malicious dissemination of fabricated information,” senior deputy speaker and Pampanga Rep. Aurelio Gonzales Jr. said.
Concerned agencies, including the Department of Information and Communications Technology and its Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, must promptly conduct an inquiry, he stressed.
“We should not allow this to happen again. We should not tolerate criminally-minded persons to wreak havoc on our national security and to give our people fake information,” he said.
Those responsible for the deepfake should be prosecuted, he added.
On the other hand, Quezon Rep. David Suarez, a deputy speaker, said investigating agencies should give Congress a periodic report on the progress of their probe, and that they could tap private sector experts to help ferret out the truth.
“It should not be difficult for them to identify the origin of the deepfake and those behind it. I suspect this bogus material originated from somewhere in the south of the country,” he said.
He called on the recipients of the President’s directive not to listen to impostors and fabricators.
“I trust that they will heed instructions issued only through official lines of communication and from the chain of command. I believe in the professionalism and patriotism of our soldiers,” he noted.