Филиппиндегі ақпараттық-коммуникациялық технологиялар кәсіби одағы

Professional organization in the Philippines

Computer Professionals' Union (CPU or CP Union) is a mass organization of information and communications technology (ICT) professionals, practitioners, and workers in the Philippines. It is registered in the Philippines as a non stock, non profit, non government organization that promotes activist ICT principles and organize ICT professionals to provide ICT services to Filipino people. Their office is located at Quezon City and their current National Coordinator is Rick Bahague. Some of CPU initiatives include Software Freedom Day celebration in the Manila, promotion of Free and Open Source Software including Drupal, and collaboration with Wikimedia Philippines.

The organization was started in 2001 by a group of information communications technology practitioners. They officially registered under the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission in 2008 as a non profit and non stock corporation.

CPU is notable for its belief that the ICT sector in the Philippines is controlled and dominated by foreign monopoly capitalists, which stunts the growth and development of Filipino technology and economy. A year before the 2010 Philippine general elections, CPU warns sophisticated cheating with the Philippines' first automated polls. They had hosted a national conference in University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City to discuss the automated election system (AES). Rick Bahague, CPU National Coordinator said that the goal of the conference was to gather experiences and best practices in technologies relevant to AES. He further said that software bugs in the AES system can affect machines to be used in the elections and the automated election system is vulnerable to manipulation from inside or outside attacks. They said that SOPA and PIPA that were being pushed in the United States Congress attack free speech and expression and would have impacts to human rights groups, bloggers, advocacy groups and all content creators in the web. They believed that any website can be closed without due process. According to CPU, sections of the law may have various interpretations that may lead to intentional or non intentional misinterpretations by State authorities wherein computer users can be punished without due process. They further said that Section 19 of the law has become far worse than SOPA and PIPA.