MANILA, Philippines?The National Bureau of Investigation probe to unmask the person responsible for uploading the sex video of cosmetic surgeon Hayden Kho and actress Katrina Halili on the Internet faces a delay with a US-based Web posting site requiring the agency to produce a court order for the system log which would identify the culprit.

NBI Anti-Fraud and Computer Crimes Division head agent Palmer Mallari told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that although they have identified the website where the video was first uploaded, the request for the system log would have to be facilitated through a US court.

The system log would reflect the Internet protocol address and the domain registration that would identify the person responsible for the initial upload and is actually similar to a fingerprint of Internet sites, he explained.

?It would take months if we go through this process. We have other cases that need to be investigated. We cannot set them aside,? Mallari said, adding that such a process would take one to three months, depending on the US court that would grant the request.

Mallari pointed out that they made the request to the US-based website two weeks ago and just recently received their response.

?We can secure the order from a US court because we have evidence for probable cause. But the delay is really a setback to resolving the case,? he said.

The NBI, he said, was waiting for assistance from the justice department to come up with an alternative legal measure to obtain the system log.

Meanwhile, Mallari revealed that they have issued a subpoena to a certain Princess Velasco whose name was mentioned by businessman Erik Johnston Chua in his sworn statement as among four people who were present when the videos in Kho?s laptop computer were initially discovered.

Chua had claimed that when he opened Kho?s laptop computer, celebrity cosmetic surgeon Vicki Belo, Dr. Mark Herbert Rosario, and Velasco were with him in the room.

The businessman was initially accused of being responsible for uploading the Kho-Halili sex video on the Internet.

Mallari said investigators still have no background information on Velasco and they were waiting for her to appear before the NBI to give her statement.

The agency?s investigation into the proliferation of the controversial video entered its second phase after the NBI recommended to the justice department the filing of a sexual violence charge against Kho, on the basis of the allegedly detrimental psychological and economic effect on Halili of the clandestinely recorded intimate encounter.

The outcome of the probe into the technical aspect of the case was independent from the initial filing of a case against Kho.