But poll body claims counter measures already in place

Transmission fiasco feared with 5,000 signal jammers

Alarmed by reports that 5,000 signal jammers have been imported into the country, possibly to disrupt transmission of the election data on the scheduled polls date, Commission on Elections spokesman James Jimenez expressed fears on prospects for their use yesterday, but nevertheless assured the public that the Comelec is now working on counter-measures to prevent the signal jammers from disrupting the transmission of data.

Smartmatic Corp., the supplier of the 82,000 precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines also assured that it has drafted all the necessary contingency measures to ensure that attempts to manipulate the results of the elections will not succeed.

Cesar Flores, Smartmatic president for Asia Pacific said this in reaction to the reported importation of some 5,000 cellular line jammers aimed at disrupting the conduct of the political exercises this May 10.

Flores said “the only achievement they (line jammers) can do is delay the transmission a few minutes.”

“It’s a moot investment whoever wants to do that,” Flores added.

According to Flores they already acquired several satellite antennas to be used for any possible technical problems during the transmission of the results of the voting while using mobile networks.

“We have no concerns about that (line jammers) because we have all the contingences in place,” he said.

Jimenez allayed fears of possible manipulations of the transmission system.

“Several reports have it that there are 5,000 or more units being brought into the country so that’s a little more worrisome. We’ve been trying to verify the accuracy of these reports, whether or not it’s true that these jammers have been brought into the country and if they have, who brought them in and for what reason by itself there is nothing illegal about that act, obviously it’s just that the numbers have caused a little anxiety among certain quarters,” Jimenez disclosed.

Earlier, Jimenez was quoted as saying that “they already know” who brought the jammers into the country, but that they are not ready to disclose who it is.

It was not explained why this was brought out by Jimenez along with the consortium that won the award for the poll automation, as cellphone jammers can be bought in many stores in Metro Manila, including the Greenhills computer shops.

Jimenez said they have anticipated this and have been prepared, which is the reason they purchased 5,000 Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN).

“On the side of the Comelec, we do have countermeasures. You can say that we have the protection to fight this,” added Jimenez.

He also noted that the “jammers” problem is nothing new and could be contradicted using also a “jammer-jammer.”

“When you’re talking about 5,000 units of the same thing and considering the proximity of the elections, then you cannot help but be suspicious, at this stage, it is only prudent that we be suspicious,” he admitted.

Asked what could be the motive behind these importation of signal jammers, the Comelec official said “we know for a fact that certain people are afraid of the changes that automation may bring so that they will do everything they can to defeat the project.”

“We in the project of course know it’s our responsibility not just to get this thing going but to make sure that it gets a fighting chance at success and that’s what we’re doing, so game on,” he said.

Meantime, Flores assured that should there be delays it would not be material since it would be impossible for these groups to hack the system.

“There is no doubt that the results will arrive at our servers,” Flores declared.

Former Sen. Francisco Tatad, however, yesterday expressed alarm over the new computer cheating method which is capable of manipulating voting machines used by many major states in the US.

Tatad during the weekly Neal Cruz “Kapihan sa Manila Hotel” called on the Comelec to look into the new discovery made by a group at Princeton University on the non-secure and inaccuracies of the Sequoia AVC advantage 9.00 DRE voting machines that were used in the US. In a nutshell, a malicious sofware can be installed to ensure that the results can deliberately add up wrong votes.

Tatad has raised his concern to inform the Comelec and the winning bidder Smartmatic to assure the country that its machines have all the safeguards that this will not happen.

In a web site presented by the Center for Information Technology Policy, it said that the AVC Advantage contains a computer. If someone installs a different computer program for that computer to run, it can deliberately add up the votes wrongly. It is easy to make a computer program that steals votes from one party’s candidates, and gives them to another, while taking care to make the total number of votes come out right, it said.

It is easy to come up with this program that takes care of the cheating on election day when hundreds of ballots are cast, and not cheat when the machine is being tested for accuracy. This kind of fraudulent computer program can modify every electronic “audit trail” in the computer. Without voter-verified paper ballots, it is said to be extremely hard to know whether a voting machine (such as the AVC Advantage) is running the right program.

It takes about seven minutes, using simple tools, to replace the computer program in the AVC Advantage with a fraudulent program that cheats.

The report added that even when the machine is not hacked to deliberately steal votes, the AVC Advantage has few user-interface flaws. Therefore, sometimes the AVC Advantage does not properly record the intent of the voter. All known voting technologies have imperfect user interfaces, although some are worse than others. The public should beware of the argument that some people make, that “we should not replace the AVC Advantage with voting method X, because X is imperfect.” The AVC Advantage’s susceptibility to installation of a fraudulent vote-counting program is far more than an imperfection: it is a fatal flaw.

The claim is that the AVC Advantage 9.00 is easily “hacked,” by the installation of fraudulent firmware, done by prying just one ROM chip from its socket and pushing a new one in, or by replacement of the Z80 processor chip.

The fraudulent firmware can steal votes during an election, just as its criminal designer programs it to do. The fraud cannot practically be detected. There is no paper audit trail on this machine; all electronic records of the votes are under the control of the firmware, which can manipulate them all simultaneously.

Without even touching a single AVC Advantage, an attacker can install fraudulent firmware into many AVC Advantage machines by viral propagation through audio-ballot cartridges. The virus can steal the votes of blind voters, can cause AVC Advantages in targeted precincts to fail to operate; or can cause WinEDS software to tally votes inaccurately. (WinEDS is the program, sold by Sequoia, that each County’s Board of Elections uses to add up votes from all the different precincts.

Makati Mayor and United Opposition (UNO) vice presidential candidate Jejomar Binay meanwhile yesterday expressed concern over the problem of weak cellphone signal encountered in Taguig City during a field test conducted by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) last week.

He said if a voting machine near the headquarters of the country’s Big 3 telecom firms failed to transmit results due to poor cellphone signal, then the problem is even larger in far-flung areas where signal strength is more erratic.

Fearing ballot snatching and other election paraphernalia, Comelec has decided to push again for another week the printing of the more than 50 million ballots for the May 10 polls.

“The original shipment date of the ballots to the various municipalities is scheduled to start April 25… if we had started to print on the 31st (January), then we would have finished printing by April 19. That means that there would be several days that the ballots would be sitting there, really not moving,” said Comelec spokesman James Jimenez.

“That’s not something that we are not comfortable with from the point of view of security,” he admitted further.

Comelec Commissioner Gregorio Larrazabal had earlier said they are expecting the ballot printing to be completed within 60 to 70 days by the National Printing Office.

The poll body is set to print a total of 50,723,734 ballots.

But Jimenez said the delays in the printing of ballots would also give the commission more time to finalize the official list of candidates since there are still unresolved petitions and moretions for disqualifications.

“As a consequence of this, as an added bonus, perhaps, the new start date gives us the opportunity to really go through the list of candidates who will be included in the ballot,” said the poll official.

However, Smartmatic Corp., the supplier of the PCOS machines said the delays in the printing would entail additional cost.

“If we cannot start printing anytime time soon then we would need to bring another printer and sheeter,” said Flores, Smartmatic Asia Pacific president.

He said so far they have brought to the country four digital printers and five sheeters that could print 800,000 ballots per day.

With the delays, Flores said they would be forced to get additional equipment.

He explained that the capacity of the printers could not be stretched.

But he assured that they could “meet their target” of printing the ballots, but that definitely it would add another cost on their P7.2 billion contract with the Comelec.

More expenses have piled up, bloating the P7.2 billion contract. The Comelec finally awarded the P243 million contract of manufacturing the ballot boxes to be used in the elections to Smartmatic-TIM.

Comelec chairman Jose Melo explained that since Smartmatic is their supplier for the automated machines and printing of the ballots, they opted to allow them to manufacture the ballot boxes.

Based on the provisions of the contract, the consortium will be producing 77,000 ballot boxes and are expected to complete it by April 19.

–Marie A. Surbano with Pat C. Santos, Daily Tribune