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Comelec taps NBI to probe ‘breach’ in Smartmatic ops

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Senate President Vicente Sotto III and Senator Imee Marcos on Thursday said there was a “breach” in the operations of Smartmatic, the tech firm supplying the automated election software for the country’s elections on May 9.

Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms chairperson Imee Marcos confers with newly-appointed Commission on Elections head Saidamen Balt Pangarungan during the joint congressional oversight committee on the automated election system (JCAOS-AES) on Thursday, March 17, 2022. Marcos and Senate President Vicente Sotto III (inset) said there was a “breach” in the operations of Smartmatic. Danny Pata

This prompted newly-appointed Commission on Elections Commissioner George Garcia to declare that the poll body will wait for the report from the National Bureau of Investigation on the “infringement” on Smartmatic.

“After the allegation that came out in a newspaper, we immediately contacted the NBI… In the same manner that the Senate Electoral Reforms committee is asking for a report, we are waiting for the report from the NBI, as they mentioned a lot earlier. We would appreciate very much if the NBI could provide us with a written report,” Garcia said.

Comelec earlier denied a newspaper report that its systems were hacked, which allegedly compromised sensitive data.

“There indeed was a security breach in the Smartmatic operation,” said Marcos, who chairs the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms and People’s Participation.

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While this is being investigated by the National Privacy Commission and other groups, Marcos said, “We have to admit that a very serious breach occurred.”

“It may not be technically hacking. However, we feel that it compromises the processes and operations of Smartmatic in very serious ways,” said the senator, whose brother Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., is running for president.

Sotto said the Senate cannot divulge certain names involved in the incident “because they (are) persons of interests.”

But he said, “I think this is part of what (the media) can divulge: A Smartmatic employee took their laptop outside (their office) and let a certain group, well, not hack, but copy.”

“I think that’s as far as we can go,” added Sotto, who is running for vice president.

Smartmatic denied these allegations, with spokesman Christopher Louie Ocampo saying: “We just want to clarify that is not true. There is no truth to that.”

“First of all, Smartmatic, to be very clear, is not involved in processing or storing ng personal data of any voter for the 2022 elections,” the lawyer said.

But Marcos said the media were “right.”

“Something did happen despite the vociferous denials of all institutions concerned in the past two hearings,” she said.

“We don’t know, but the potential for a very serious security breach is now there because it appears Smartmatic has all these contractual employees who have access to very confidential data, locations and other facilities,” the senator added.

Ocampo said Smartmatic only provides the automated election system.

Its servers are “completely separate and independent” from those of Comelec, he said.

“There is no linkage there. Even the employees of Smartmatic have no access, as in they cannot connect to the servers and system of Comelec,” he said.

The spokesman appealed to lawmakers: “We are asking for details so that we can verify.”

“It is very easy to fabricate this data. Anyone can make these documents and post them on Facebook and say this can affect the 2022 elections. That is all we want, for us to refrain from jumping to this conclusion,” said Ocampo.

Senate President Vicente Sotto III

Meanwhile, Sotto said he was concerned “our election gatekeepers lacked in ensuring the integrity of the May 9 elections.”

“In our meeting today, it became clear that there was a breach in the Smartmatic systems,” he said.

While there was still no indication of a compromise in Comelec systems for now, Sotto said it was “unfortunate” the poll body did not ask for an executive session with the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee (JCOC) right after the breach occurred last January.

“It (Comelec) should have been more forthright with this information, which is critical to the elections, but instead, it even issued a gag order on Smartmatic which subsequently refused to cooperate with our investigative agencies,” he said.

Sotto also criticized the Comelec for putting “too much responsibility” on a single commissioner to handle almost all the aspects of the election.

He called on the poll body to disperse the said responsibility among other commissioners to ensure checks and balances.

“We will find out how deep and wide the negligence may have gone,” he said.

Sotto vowed that the Senate will investigate the issue further, especially since the May 9 elections are happening in less than two months.

“We also strongly recommend to the Comelec to adopt increased transparency and vote security measures as recommended by our various IT experts, election watchdogs, and other AES stakeholders,” added Sotto.

Meanwhile, Garcia said: “We learn a lot during the exchanges of information earlier, and we said we will have to act immediately,” Garcia said.

At the same time, the poll commissioner insisted there was no hacking involved on the part of the Comelec itself.

“The Comelec system was not hacked. Pure and simple. I can honestly tell you eye to eye, Comelec was never and it was not hacked,” Garcia said.

“As far as the relationship of Smartmatic to the Comelec, I feel that it would be perfectly okay to say that from the very beginning we have been saying that Comelec is fully in charge of the elections, and that we are confident that even in this particular case, no hacking happened,” Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said.

“Therefore, we feel that there will be no impact of that alleged hacking on the election results for 2022,” he added.

But Marcos claimed data regarding Smartmatic, including personal information, ledgers, photos of their office, contact persons in the Comelec might have been hacked by a syndicate group.

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