POLL watchdog Kontra Daya on Wednesday demanded the resignation of Commission on Elections Chairman Andres Bautista over another voters’ information theft in Lanao del Sur last January.
Kontra Daya convenor professor Danilo Arao said Bautista apparently failed to learn lessons from “the worst recorded breach on a government-held personal database in the world” last March when the data of voters were exfiltrated from the Comelec. The incident has come to be known as “Comeleak.”
“This means only one thing: The Comelec itself needs a ‘reboot’,” Arao said. “The Comelec’s fresh start should be in the form of Comelec Chairman Andres Bautista’s resignation after he has miserably failed to provide the necessary means to protect voters’ data.”
As if the first Comeleak was not bad enough, another data theft incident happened in Wao town in Lanao del Sur last January when unidentified people stole a computer that contained a copy of the national voters’ list.
“Comelec officials admitted that it took two weeks to submit a report regarding what happened at Wao, using as an excuse the need not to disrupt the ongoing voter registration for the Oct. 23, 2017 Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan Elections,” said Arao.
“We find this hard to believe, but at the same time not surprising given that the 2016 [Comeleak] was initially reported by TrendMicro as early as April 6 but it was publicly confirmed by Comelec only 15 days after,” said Arao.
“Indeed, the Wao break-in highlights anew the brazen incompetence of the Comelec leadership and it is high time that Bautista resign,” said Arao.
“This is the second breach involving the Comelec voter registration database” in a span of less than a year, said NPC Commissioner Raymund Liboro.
The Comelec confirmed that a copy of the national voters’ list was on the computer stolen in Wao last January.
Comelec Executive Director Jose Tolentino Jr. said the National List of Registered Voters contains the demographics data of nearly 76 million active and deactivated voters as of October 2016, but not their biometrics data.
Only the biometrics data of voters in Wao are on the stolen computer, where the municipality’s Voter Registration System is stored, he said.