Script change could have triggered other changes

Everyone totally misses the point about a Smartmatic person changing a line in the canvassing program to replace a “?” character into an “ñ.” The essential point in this matter is not that the change was “minor”; the crucial issue is that a Smartmatic technician had access to the server program while the canvassing was going on. This is a serious security breach and should not have been allowed. If that technician can change one character, he can change other things as well.

Indeed, one can speculate that the so-called “minor change” might have been deliberately intended to act as a trigger to launch a sleeping worm or Trojan horse already embedded in the system and programmed to make major changes, including the altering of vote counts. Thus, the Smartmatic spokesperson could claim with a straight face that the script change he made was “minor,” while neglecting to say that this trivial change was the trigger for another script that would make major outcome-altering changes.

In fact, the Smartmatic action is expressly prohibited under our Automated Election System Law (Republic Act No.  9369). Section 35(c) of that law prohibits “gaining or causing access to using, altering, destroying or disclosing any computer data, program, system software, network or any computer-related devices, facilities, hardware or equipment, whether classified or declassified.” Such acts are prohibited whether or not any election results are affected.

Among the numerous deficiencies in the conduct of the two prior automated elections, these very similar incidents are worth bearing in mind:

1. In 2010, a Smartmatic technician cavalierly accessed the canvassing program to change the number of voters after the tally showed an erroneous 256 million as the total number of registered voters; and

2. In 2013, a Smartmatic technician accessed the canvassing server to correct a script that produced an astonishing 12-million vote surge barely two hours into the canvassing. (Uncorrected, that surge would have produced an aggregate vote far exceeding the total number of registered voters.) These incidents show major flaws in the Smartmatic system that our Commission on Elections has been so bent on foisting on the Filipino people.

This now puts the entire canvassing process in serious doubt. The integrity of the automated election results can now be reasonably questioned.

—RENÉ AZURIN

author, “Hacking Our Democracy,” and convener, AES Watch