IT groups to meet to discuss automated polls

MANILA, Philippines - Concerned that automated counting in next year's election may be manipulated to facilitate big-time cheating, concerned information technology groups will meet to tackle the problem in Quezon City Wednesday. The Computer Professionals’ Union (CPU) said the National conference that will tackle automated election system will be held at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. "It primarily aims to gather experiences and best practices in technologies relevant to AES (advanced encryption system). CPU hopes to set a baseline that will serve as a monitoring mechanism of the people on AES providers and the Commission on Elections," CPU said in an article on the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines Web site www.cbcpnews.com. CPU national coordinator Rick Bahague said automated large-scale cheating can happen if the Comelec fails to implement automated elections properly. He said the current automated election system is vulnerable to insider manipulation, software engineering problems, and remote or network attacks. “Whether intentional or incidental, a software problem in the AES system can affect the machines to be used in the elections. Software bugs are commonplace and they sometimes affect the same hardware with the same configurations differently," Bahague added. Bahague said that with insider access to the AES, vote manipulation can become more sophisticated. “Dagdag-bawas or tampering can be made to appear mathematically consistent. In the manual elections, adding or subtracting to the results at the canvassing stage produces inconsistent totals when compared to the number of registered voters and actual votes cast. With the AES, this can now be made to appear consistent if direct manipulation to the data is made or by programming the system to reconcile the numbers. Insiders can overwrite the consolidated data with results favorable to certain candidates. In the manual elections, the coordinated manipulation of municipal/provincial canvass is limited by geographical factors. In the AES, tampering in the synchronized provincial canvass can now be done by just manipulating the consolidation servers at the municipal, provincial and national canvassing levels," he said. The Supreme Court scrapped the first automation attempt in 2004 when the Comelec's P1.7-billion contract with Mega Pacific Consortium was nullified due to irregularities. On the other hand, Bahague noted the Comelec had chosen Optical Mark Reader (OMR) technology for the 2010 National Elections. “Moreover, the OMR system will use 80,000 Precinct Counting Optical Sensor (PCOS) machines. The PCOS includes a computer system, an OMR device which will read ballots marked by the voter, and a networking device for data transmission. This will cost the Filipino people P11 Billion," Bahague said. He said that during transmission of data from municipal to provincial up to the national canvassing, there are still dangers of manipulation. Outside attackers can do advance cracking techniques to alter data being transmitted, he said. “In addition, the AES should also provide a voter-verifiable audit trail. A voter-verifiable-audit mechanism allows a voter to check consistency between his or her ballot and the recording made by the AES. In the event that machines fail, there should be a way to recount votes independently from the machines," he said. He said a suitable AES should accurately capture voter's intent to actual tally. It should be secured such that ballot secrecy is protected. It should be encrypted and digitally signed so that the ballot data is protected and difficult to tamper with, he said. "It should be able to effectively handle a large number of voters. Finally, it should release report faster than the manual elections," he added. On the other hand, the CPU suggested that government make the source code of software used by the AES be open and released to the public for review. “However, with the current timeline of Commission on Elections, this will not happen. If source codes are released, no time for review is allotted," said Bahague. - GMANews.TV