Not to worry.
That’s what COMELEC Chairman Jose Melo is telling us yet again.
This is in the wake of the twin decisions of PLDT /Smart Telecoms and Globe Telecoms to back off from their earlier readiness to make their mission critical data processing centers in Makati as the mainframe vote data collection and processing hubs for the May 10.
The telcos are saying they’re worried about the data centers’ security.
The COMELEC’s kneejerk reaction?
Don’t worry we’ll just post phalanxes of policemen and soldiers to stand guard.
Out of respect, no guffaws were heard t the Senate hearing.
But the ‘honorable’ Mr. Melo’s cluelessness was abysmal!
The reference to the centers being secure was not only the physical aspect.
They need to be secure from cyber terrorist attacks, attacks that can compromise the integrity of the servers, and the data they hold!!
One need only recall the recent hacking of 5 government sites with the cybe criminals warning that they may target the servers of the COMELEC.
These dangers cannot be glossed over any longer.
Even the ‘presidentiables’ are waking up to the clear and present danger that civil society members have been warning about for months: that the elections can be vunverable to automated cheating or digital dagdag bawas.
Questions are also emerging about just how stable the Luzon power grid will be come election day.
Energy officials are giving the tongue-in-cheek assurance that Luzon has 1,000 megawatts of excess generating capacity.
Don’t be fooled.
Energy sector experts know only too well that 1,000 megawatts in reserve power IS THIN, given the configuration of the grid where the tripping on one plant normally triggers a chain reaction of other plant, and the grid itself tripping off to prevent serious system-wide damage.
Taking the threats to the vote data processing servers and the power grid together spells failure of election.
The poll body now says the alternative data centers offered by the two telcos are ok for use and so there’s really no worry about the hubs beinf physically attacked.
The sites’ location, says COMELEC will not be made public and known only to partners like the Parish Pastoral Council for responsible voting.
No word about whether the political parties ill be told where the vote result tallies will be ‘processed’.
Given ‘immense public trust’ for the COMELEC and how it has practically outsourced its constitutional mandate of managing the election this secrecy stunt raises new doubys about the lack of transparency in this sovereign exercise!
The COMELEC’s nonchalant ‘what me worry stance’ is unacceptable.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Alfred broke new ground when he arrived, oh, I would guess in the 1950′s. Never had America seen such a irreverent poke at society’s foibles. Now, Saturday Night Live is the gold-plated version of same.
In the Philippines, there is COMELEC, indeed, and the photo resemblance is one of the funniest things I have seen of late. The fate of a nation rests on their shoulders and they have, from the getgo, said “trust us”, not to worry. “What, me worry?” indeed. Meanwhile, dates slip, machines don’t arrive, people point out the holes in (non-physical) security and the mouthpiece runs and hides, training slides, and now this. Classic, Ding, classic.
Joe
I actually wanted to write a rant, Joe.
The mental constitution, the mindset, of this constitutional agency was recent described by am eminent expert on international law and former undersecretary as “abysmal”.
When I was going over its recent vacuous assertions I could only think of Alfred. :)
Chiz Escudero and Loren Legarda are in on this.
Remember, they wanted the water impounding and power generating dams to release water without the benefit of doppler data.
Now, the rice fields are drying up and Binga and Ambuklao dams (which power a large part of the ‘solid north’ are in danger of not having enough electricity to power the politicos’ campaign jingles.
But Occam’s razor is a simpler explanation – the COMELEC is incompetent.
COMELEC hierarchy senior managers and above already have or can get NBI and whatever police clearances are needed to get hired by the next administration Aquino, Villar, Gibo, Perlas or otherwise.
Perhaps, this conclusion written by Chief Justice Puno in their decision to DISMISS the petition filed by Harry Roque vs. Comelec may enlighten and give you some hope, I quote:
“We are not unaware of the many doomsday scenarios peddled by doubting Thomases if the coming May 2010 elections will be fully automated. To downgrade these scenarios, let it be emphasized that the PCOS System procured by COMELEC is a paper-based system. It has a provision for system auditability and a voter-verified paper trail. The official ballots may be compared with their digital images stored in the memory cards. All actions done on the machine are stored and can be printed out by the BEI chairperson as an audit log, which includes time stamps. And in the event of problems arising from non-functioning PCOS machines, the official ballots cast in the precincts, which have previously been fed into the locked ballot box, could be used for a manual recount. With these safeguards, the fear of automation failure should not overwhelm us.
We have been bedevilled in the past by elections that are not free, fair and honest. These elections have made a mockery of our democracy for they frustrated the sovereign right of the people to choose who ought to rule them. These elections have also resulted in instability of governments whose legitimacy has been placed in doubt. All these elections were conducted manually. For the first time, we shall be conducting our May 2010 elections through full automation. To be sure, full automation will not completely cleanse the dirt in our electoral system. But it is a big forward step which can lead us to the gateway of real democracy where the vote of the people is sacred and supreme.”
To add, I will pit Chairman Melo’s credibility against most of these naysayers, fear mongerers and critics.
While Hairy Roque may package himself as the knight in shining armour, his penchant for giving press releases before filing cases and then filing cases with such incompetence that he always loses by technicality makes him a bit of a laughingstock.
Watch for the unthinkable to happen in this election. Candidates
who really wanted to cheat will find good ways to cheat.
Here we go again Mr. Ding, a blogger trying to be a techie. The main concern of the telcos is physical security that is why Chair Melo is offering them a battalion of soldiers and 24/7 air cover if need be and now that both parties agreed on a new location, they want to keep it a secret. I guess your fear of cyber attacks comes from your speculation that Comelec will use the Internet for transmission when what the telcos are setting up for them is a Virtual Private Network (VPN). VPN is much harder to infiltrate because it has a 128-bit encryption and PKI based authentication system. Secrecy is also the best defense against would be hackers because how would they know where to attack when they don’t know where their target is. There is a right time and place for transparency and this is not one of them. It would be like giving your enemies a roadmap to your bunker. Sometimes it really makes me wonder why people speculate on things that are more often than not, fundamentally wrong just to drum up fear. Could it just be a premeditated bias based on utter mistrust of the NEW Comelec? I think so just based on your blogs, you have nothing nice to say about Comelec nor the Automated Elections? I want to hear your alternative.
It is fairly clear that the blogger who is not even privy to the transaction between Comelec and the telcos wants to foist upon his readers his own speculative view as to why the telcos wanted out. It is a study of an outsider appearing to know more than the parties do, but actually speculating what the parties intended.
You assume that I have no sources other my humble brain.
The COMELEC’s pipes leak. Gets?
If Comelec’s pipes do leak your way then the leakee is feeding you the wrong info perhaps to discredit you later. A source is only good if accurate info passed on to you, the messenger. I always raise my eyebrows when I read something like, “according to a very reliable source whose name we can not disclose…”, because there is a very good chance it’s all made up.
Well,
risk left unattended is greater risk than risk attended to by every checkpoint possible.
You seem to be arguing “go away”,
as does COMELEC.
What are they, and you, afraid of?
Makes me worry.
Joe
I am a journalist first and a blogger second.
I infer I have a single source.
Let me say it bluntly: you’re DEAD wrong.
@Joe, the risks are attended to and are properly addressed. Yes, I’m saying Go Away to media practitioners who disseminates information to the general public based on speculation, half truths and unverified sources. Admittedly, Ding claims he has one single source but as a general rule should’nt he have verified with one or more other sources to come up with a more responsible and credible reporting. What really bothers me are all the smut being reported or written irresponsibly in mass media platforms. Left unchecked, I think, is the greater risk because of media’s power to convince.
does the esteemed monetarist have a reliable source too? or is he/she engaging in punditry as well?
how can one check the ‘smut’ written by media? i suppose the monetarist is a Comelec official/privy to these matters?
If so, please, feel free to clarify.
Let’s put Mr. Ding’s “worries and concerns” in perspective considering the alternatives. We can go (1)full automation as planned, (2)partial automation, (3)Lagman’s OES system which is manual voting and electronic transmission & canvassing or (4)fully manual. Let’s lists his concerns as written in this article, (a) cyberattacks which can affect 1,2,&3; (b)automated cheating or digital dagdag bawas which can affect 1,2 &3; and (c) power failure which can affect all alternatives. Correct me if I’m wrong but deducing from these, I can only conclude that Mr. Ding wants us to go back to the fully manual. You can throw all the mud you want but what is your alternative?
Automation is good. India’s 700 million votes are counted in a single day.
But in our case, the comelec and smartmatic are waaaaay behind schedule to allay normal pundits’ (like me) fears.
for projects of this scale and with so much at stake, we should have all the equipment by now and should have done one or two dry runs. as it is, there is no time to test the system, printing is delayed, delivery of machines is delayed, and voter education is almost non-existent..unless you say 150 mock electors are good enough..(even that exercise rejected 3 out of 10 ballots)
see, even Globe and COMELEC are wrangling over the critical data centres when these should have been ironed out ages ago
Wrong again. I have long advocated a double track count. But do you know what I mean? Don’t assume.
Astroturf know who they are. But they can’t think in two tracks because, well, I don’t know. I long ago gave up.
But I suspect the cheating, if any, will go retail, as in padding the voter’s list and using ghost/zombies, as well as direct vote buying.
Nothing to worry about. The Comelec is smart after all.
READ MY LIPS: I AM TALKING TO MORE THAN ONE SOURCE.
THESE INCLUDE IT PROFESSIONALS AND COMELEC INSIDERS. SIGURO GETS MO NA.
Did I ruffle your feathers? Why did you say thet “I am a journalist first and a blogger second. I infer I have a single source.” Are you now changing your statement now that you’ve been owned? You are being fed inaccurate information by your IT professional and Comelec insiders “sources”.
You can go over this, too:
http://atmidfield.com/2010/02/03/the-elections-under-seige-is-digital-dagdag-bawas-possible/
Hahaha, this is an old study by Princeton professors on an old model Diebold DRE machine done with the luxury of time. You can not attribute the security flaws of a competitor to Smartmatic. If you have studied carefully the security features of the PCOS machines then perhaps you can do better reporting but I guess not since you are undoubtedtly biased.
Further reading is available:
http://atmidfield.com/2010/02/01/how-will-may-10-2010-be-like-and-other-questions-seeking-answers/
Quoted from your article:
“But now with the re-clustering, the number of voters per clustered precinct has ballooned to at least 1,500 (for 5 combined centers to as much as 2,000 or 2,100 on election day!!!
Each voter in each precinct will be using the voting machines for the first time.
A source with years of experience told me, “if it takes each voter one minute to fill up the ballot — which will have more than 200 candidates — it would take 2,000 minutes for everyone to cast his or her vote. That’s more than 33 hours!”—–Ding
Your information and your math with the help from this source with years of experience are totally wrong.
Here’s the facts and the math:
1. Each machine that will handle a clustered precinct will have a maximun of only 1,000 voters not the 2,000 that you claim.
2. There are 11 hours of voting time or 660 minutes.
3. Twelve voters (12) are allowed to vote at each instance.
4. Time and motion studies resulted in an average of 6-7 minutes to complete the voting process.
Therefore, Total No. of Voters / No. of voters per instance
1,000 / 12 = 83.33 instances
Total No. of instances x Average Minutes to complete voting
83.33 x 7 = 583.31 minutes
Total No. of minutes for voting period = 660.
Therefore, 660 – 583 = 77 minutes excess/cushion time
Now, the just the facts, just the facts.
Will 6-7 minutes cover downtime like voter not knowing how to start, what to fill up, or machine rejecting ballot and BES not knowing what to do? I think voting time allowance is too tight. Perhaps, the assumption is the BES are already trained and voters had been oriented.
what about the time required for the board of electors to check your name and credentials, for the time spent explaining to you what you should do?
and the facts:
1. are there ALWAYS 12 voting booths?
2. do ALL precincts open on TIME giving you 660 minutes? Metro Manila precincts are not known for opening on time.
No computer system is safe for a determined Hacker. This is the truth.
Hacking is a computer curse that has been there since Ritchie and Kernighan played program hide and seek at Bell research laboratory while developing the C programming language. What is alarming is the blind obstinacy to proceed with the project notwithstanding inadequate preparations and incomplete quality check in all critical phases of the project – hardware, software, processes, organization, training and disaster recovery systems. Anyone of these could fail – hardware, personnel and transmission failure, very likely.
Yep,
a three-year project crammed into one year, managed by people who do not comprehend technology. It reminds me of working for the bank, when the marketing guys would insist on a simplistic impractical solution, and the techies would go nuts trying to explain all the realities. Here the marketing guys make the decisions, not the techies . . .
Joe
What really grates is the possibility that well ahead of the project award even the table was sold.