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THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) will tap the
services of a team of “international hackers” to test the
security of the pilot testing of Internet voting in Singapore,
slated two months after the holding of the regular May elections.
Commissioner Florentino A. Tuason
Jr., chairman, committee on overseas absentee voting, said in a
press conference that the team of hackers would employ “ethical
hacking” in their bid to test the Philippines’ first voting via
the Internet.
Ethical hacking is the practice
of breaking into a system for the purpose of discovery if there are
any security vulnerabilities. The pilot testing of Internet voting
is set on July 10, 2007.
The Comelec has awarded the
P23.5-million Internet voting contract to Scytl, a Spanish IT
company. The funding provision to defray the expenses to be incurred
was contained in Comelec Resolution 7835.
Tuason clarified that the hackers
that will be tapped are professionals and are experienced in
assessing the impenetrability of the safety and security features of
Internet system even as he stressed that Internet voting is
100-percent secure.
He said that an international
patent covers the security system of the Spanish-based company and
the government of Switzerland has declared that the technology is
safe.
“The scheduled voting via the
Internet will be on a nonbinding basis wherein 26,000 registered
voters in Singapore would elect 12 senators and one party-list for
the purpose of determining the viability and the security of
Internet voting,” Tuason said.
The move to implement e-voting in
Singapore was approved by the Comelec en banc on January 16 under
Minute Resolution 07-0095 on recommendations by the information and
technology department and the committee on overseas absentee voting.
Under the Comelec plan, e-voting
would be pilot tested in Singapore and would be duplicated in other
countries in future elections if it is proven to be successful.
But the poll body was forced to
back track on its original plan of a binding Internet voting in
Singapore following threats of legal action, which could lead to the
disfranchisement of some 26,000 voters in Singapore.
--William B. Depasupil
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