Garcia says no Comelec employees were involved in alleged Smartmatic breach

Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner George Garcia on Wednesday maintained that none of their employees were involved in the alleged security breach of the poll technology provider Smartmatic’s system.

“Para sa House of Representatives, ang sabi po nila empleyado nila (Smartmatic), hindi naman empleyado ng Commission on Elections. Nililiwanag ko po, wala pong empleyado ng Comelec na na-involve dito,” he said during a Super Radyo dzBB interview.

(For the House of Representatives, they said that the employee was from Smartmatic and not from Comelec. Let me just clarify that no Comelec employee was involved in this issue.)

During the House Committee on Suffrage and Electoral Reforms hearing on Monday, Smartmatic spokesman Atty. Christopher Louie Ocampo emphasized that their system “was not hacked” and that Eleksyon 2022 would remain 100% safe and secure despite the issue.

Ocampo then said that the source code and software of the Automated Election System was wholly governed and controlled by Comelec, noting that the poll body’s own servers and infrastructure are separate and distinct from those of Smartmatic.

Meanwhile, for their part, Garcia said that a hacker should come from inside  Comelec should there be hacking in their own system.

“Para makapag-hack na tinatawag, kinakailangan from the inside. ‘Yung pong lugar na kung nasaan ang aming sistema, naku parang nasa top level na parang kayong nasa White House. Tapos bago kayo makapasok, ‘yung password, hindi nasa iisang tao lang. Para ma-hack niyo ‘yung sistema, dapat nandoon ka sa loob, not coming from outside,” he said.

(To be able to hack, a person would have to be an insider. The place where our system is located, it’s like you’re at the top level of the White House. Then before you can enter, the password would not be coming from just one person. In order for you to hack the system, you must be inside, not coming from outside.)

Senator Imee Marcos, chairman of the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms, claimed last week that a Smartmatic data breach that included personal information, ledgers, office photos, contact persons in the Comelec, might have been hacked by a syndicate.

The said Smartmatic employee involved in the alleged security breach in its system has been placed under the custody of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

Garcia said they are now waiting for the NBI’s report regarding the matter, assuring that the information will be released to the public as soon as possible.

“Hindi po na-compromise, kahit na ano, ang data o sistema ng Comelec (None of Comelec’s data or system were compromised),” Garcia said, adding that they would still discuss such matters during the Comelec en banc.

In January, the Comelec assured the public that election data for the 2022 polls were not hacked, disputing a report by the Manila Bulletin that poll data — network diagrams, IP addresses, list of all privileged users, domain admin credentials, among others — were hacked. —KG, GMA News