Lacson is one of the authors and the sponsor in the Senate of what is now Republic Act 11479, the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, signed into law by President Rodrigo Duterte on July 3, 2020. The law replaces the Human Security Act of 2007 (RA 9372), which he noted became a dead-letter law as some of its provisions - including a P500,000 daily penalty for the wrongful detention of a suspected terrorist - discouraged law enforcers from using it to charge suspected terrorists. In more than 10 years in effect, the 2007 law resulted in just one conviction and just one proscribed terrorist organization such as the Abu Sayyaf Group, he added.