THE National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) now has under its custody a former employee of Smartmatic who allegedly leaked confidential information related to the upcoming national and local elections.
According to Senate President Vicente Sotto III, this was among the information learned from the NBI during the committee hearing yesterday of the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms and People’s Participation regarding an alleged security or data breach at Smartmatic, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) supplier of automated vote counting machines and automated election system technology.
Sotto said they were provided with a copy of the affidavit executed by the former Smartmatic employee.
However, he said this document cannot be made public and they cannot divulge the former Smartmatic employee’s name and the contents of the affidavit since it was given during an executive session.
Under Senate rules, any data or information provided during an executive session cannot be made public, unless the senators themselves are all in agreement to divulge the information, just like what they did yesterday about the former Smartmatic employee who allegedly provided confidential data about the election.
According to the Senate president, what they can says is that the former employee is not a disgruntled one but more of corrupt since the person was offered money in exchange for information.
He said the alleged breach is the responsibility of Smartmatic since their laptop was the one used by the former employee.