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Demand letter served on poll body over disastrous ‘Comeleak’ breach

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Dissent

There continues to be a lot of media coverage of the COMELEC breach in the Philippines. Here’s an interesting response. Carlos Nazareno reports:

The Center for International Law Philippines (Centerlaw), a human rights legal group, delivered on Monday, April 25, a demand letter to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) over its possible failure to reasonably protect the sensitive private data of registered voters that resulted in the hacking and leaking incident dubbed #Comeleak.

In his individual capacity as a private citizen, Jose Ramon Albert, senior research fellow of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, formally demanded that the Comelec notify the National Privacy Commission the nature of the breach, the sensitive personal information involved, and the measures taken by poll agency to address the breach and who are the officials designated by the Comelec as accountable for its compliance with RA 10173 or the Data Privacy Act of 2012.

Albert, who is the former secretary general of the National Statistical Coordination Board and member of the Privacy Advisory Group of the United Nations Global Pulse, was assisted by lawyer Romel Bagares of Centerlaw.

The demand letter reminded members of the Comelec that, “Under Section 30 of the Data Privacy Act, it is a crime to conceal security breaches involving sensitive personal information, with a penalty of imprisonment of one year and six months to five years and a fine of not less than P500,000.00 but not more than P1,000,000.00.”

The Comelec has been given 24 hours to respond, after which a formal complaint will be filed against the poll body by Albert via Centerlaw before the National Privacy Commission.

Read more on Newsbytes.ph.

I don’t know if their approach will be effective, but I like it. It’s one thing to ask for more time to investigate, but it really doesn’t take that long to verify whether a leaked database contains real data, even if you haven’t verified all of it. Contrast COMELEC’s approach with that of the INE in Mexico who took a bit of time to investigate and then publicly confirmed that the leaked list was from the official February, 2015 list.

Governments need to be held strictly accountable when there’s a breach of this magnitude, and they need to be transparent. Keeping the public waiting for confirmation should result in heads rolling, criminal charges, or huge personal fines that insurance will not cover.

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