BY RAYMOND AFRICA and ASHZEL HACHERO
SEN. Aquilino Pimentel III yesterday told Smartmatic International, elections system provider of the Commission on Elections (Comelec), to explain the reported breach in its operations, which was exposed last week.
He said the posting on social media of information obtained through the breach could be meant to introduce doubt on the electoral system.
The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting, the Comelec’s citizens arm for the May 9 elections, appealed to the public to continue to trust the Comelec and Smartmatic.
Arwin Serrano, director for Voters Education and Volunteer Mobilization, assured the public the data breach would not affect the integrity of the elections as the issue involved only the files of some Comelec officials and their personal engagement with Smartmatic.
Pimentel, in an interview with radio DZBB, said he found it peculiar a multinational company like Smartmatic would experience a security breach.
“Dapat i-explain nila bakit ganoon kasi multinational yan, involved pa raw sa Venezuela and US elections. Sanay na sila dapat sa standards ng quality control. Paano nalusutan ng rogue employee (Smartmatic should explain because as a multinational company which was reportedly involved in the elections in Venezuela and the US, it should have strict standards in quality control but a ‘rogue’ employee was able to slip past them),” he said.
Pimentel was referring to a contractual employee of Smartmatic who worked as a “quality assurance technician” who was reportedly the source of the leak of information which was eventually uploaded on Facebook by a group of hackers.
According to Senate President Vicente Sotto III, the Smartmatic employee brought out the company-issued laptop and apparently let someone copy sensitive files from it. Sotto got the information after an executive session last Thursday, parts of which he allowed to be made public.
Pimentel said Smartmatic should have a high level of security within, and not allow its employees access to important files if it is not under his/her job description.
“The office processes of Smartmatic are now under question. Office policy dictates that laptops cannot be brought outside the office but how come it happened? That’s the question. Then the laptop issued to the quality assurance technician had information more than is necessary for his job. So, how come the laptop of the rogue employee has so much information taken from your server or hard drive that he or she does not need as a quality assurance technician? No. 2 question, why does he or she have to bring the laptop out of their office? There are a lot of questions about the office processes and cyber/computer security of Smartmatic),” Pimentel said in mixed English and Filipino.
Pimentel said the information taken was uploaded on Facebook apparently to “introduce doubt into the electoral system.”
“It is hard to tell who will benefit from all these. But what I am saying is we are all affected because the hacker group posted the information, which will cast doubt on the results of the elections. The information was posted on Facebook, so there is an agenda. The minimum [agenda] I can think of is to introduce doubt into the electoral system,” he also said.
Pimentel also said Comelec should explain why it has committed a lot of “lapses” in its preparations from the May elections, including the printing of ballots without witnesses and reconfiguration of SD cards, also without witnesses.
He said Comelec must think of something to allay public doubt on the integrity of the May elections, He said while the Comelec chairman has vowed the elections will be transparent at fair, “the action must match the words.”
Serrano, in an interview also with radio DZBB, said the breach issue should not sidetrack Comelec’s preparations for the national and local elections.
“Hindi tayo nami-miligro. Patuloy pa rin tayong focused sa ating ginagawang paghahanda. Naniniwala ang inyong lingkod na patuloy nating pagkatiwalaan ang ating automated elections system sa darating na May 9, 2022 elections (It has nothing to do with it. We are not at risk. We remain focused on our preparation and I believe that we should continue trusting the automated election systems in the upcoming May 9, 2022 elections),” Serrano said.
He added that based on information collated since the alleged breach happened in January, the compromised data came from past the 2016 elections.
“Yung mga nakuha namang impormasyon mga dati na itong kinakalap na impormasyon noong 2016, tapos ’yung nakuha pa ng hacking team na ito ay puro personal profiles at saka ilang mga personal engagements ng Smartmatic with Comelec noong 2016. So walang kinalaman ito dito sa ating darating na 2022 elections (The information collected was from previous elections, last 2016, and the information that the hacking team got concerned only personal profiles and personal engagements of Smartmatic with Comelec in 2016. It has nothing to do with the 2022 elections.
On Thursday last week, Sen. Imee Marcos, chairperson of the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms, said data regarding Smartmatic, including personal information, ledgers, as well as contact persons in the Comelec, might have been hacked by a syndicate group.
The Comelec denied that its automated election system was hacked, despite Marcos’ allegations.
Marcos’ younger brother, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., is running for president.
Meanwhile, the controversial policy on the withdrawal and substitution of candidates will be reviewed by the Comelec after the May polls, said Commissioner George Garcia.
“Many say it is being abused and, thus, prohibited. It would be better if we look into if this is it is really being abused,” he said.
Garcia said Comelec will come up with a position paper on the amendments to the substitution policy.
To recall, President Duterte came in as a substitute candidate of PDP-Laban for its standard bearer, Martin Diño, back in the May 2016 presidential elections.
In the May 2019 polls, the Duterte Youth party-list was put under the spotlight after it was able to withdraw and substitute its nominees for at least three times despite going beyond the deadline set by the Comelec.
For the May 2022 polls, 19 candidates for national posts withdrew their candidacies, while 10 filed their bids as substitute bets.
Last December, Sen. Leila de Lima filed a bill seeking to prevent the abuse of the law on substitution of candidates for the national and local elections, by looking to provide a more limited scope. — With Gerard Naval
