SENATOR Imee Marcos warned Smartmatic of possible criminal charges in connection with the leaked information about the elections that they should have kept secret.
Marcos, chairman of the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms, said Smartmatic must still be held responsible for the leaked information even if the person responsible for the security breach is not anymore an employee of the company.
She emphasized on the responsibility of Smartmatic to secure the data for the elections that were shared to them by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) being the poll body’s software provider.
The senator explained that this can be a ground or basis for the Comelec to cancel any contract it has with Smartmatic. However, it won’t be practical anymore to seek a replacement for Smartmatic because of lack of time since there is only 52 days away before the elections.
Since Smartmatic is still present and the alleged security breach is still under investigation, the Comelec and Smartmatic must ensure that the incident won’t happen again.
However, Marcos is not convinced of what the Comelec said that there were no sensitive data involved and the supposed leaked information is already old but she said the incident should still be a subject of an even deeper probe.
It appeared that the leaked information supposedly contained username, password and flow chart of Smartmatic.
Meanwhile, Marcos emphasized with the Comelec to conduct a random check on ballots already printed and the SD cards of the vote counting machines, which she said were all done without the presence of observers from political parties and election watchdogs.
If needed, she said, the Comelec should pull out the SD cards from the machines so that everyone is assured that there are no pre-loaded votes in the cards.