COMELEC hacking should be treated as a serious national security problem

This column by Cecilio Arillo has some interesting figures…. and concerns.

IF no security contingency plan is yet in place, the country’s armed services (police and military) should immediately draw up one because the likelihood of an election failure is not far removed as a result of the massive hacking of the confidential biometric files of voters stored in the Commission on Elections (Comelec) databank.

The hacked data included the complete names, fingerprints, pictures, cell phones and landline telephone numbers, individual addresses of 54,363,329 voters and the exact locations of the 84,000 clustered precincts they will be voting in on election day (May 9) in 81 provinces, 145 cities and 1,489 municipalities throughout the country.

The National Capital Region officially listed 6,253,249 voters; Luzon, 24,164,023; the Visayas, 11,316,792; and Mindanao, 12,629,265.

Read more on Business Mirror. I wonder how readily the cheating scenarios he describes could actually be implemented but where there’s a will, there may be a way?