My job is to be suspicious of PCOS, says Koko Pimentel

Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III on Saturday said he will continue to tear through perceived flaws in the automated election machines, which the Commission on Elections has bought with the blessings of the Supreme Court.

“I am glad that the Comelec started to prepare early [for the 2013 polls] … [but] I am still not satisfied about the integrity of the Smartmatic PCOS (Precinct Count Optical Scanners) system–the entire system,” said Pimentel, chair of the Senate committee on electoral reforms and the Senate oversight committee on suffrage.

“But it is my job to be suspicious. The people should be happy if I am suspicious and we explore and we do not find anything [wrong].”

Pimentel was here for the Baguio leg of his national disaster risk management tour. This is the roadshow’s fifth event, following a consultative forum in Candon City on July 4.

Speaking to reporters, Pimentel said, “I will continue to triple-check the system to discover bugs, malicious software … or any other irregularity.”

He said he had discovered a new flaw in the way the Comelec or Smartmatic would create key codes.

“Sa first hearing ko, mayroon na akong napansin na (During my committee’s first hearing on June 28, I observed) one possible weakness sa (in the) system which I will bring up during the second hearing. This concerns the generation of public and private keys,” he said.

“Ang sinabi kasi ng Smartmatic (Smartmatic tells us), one of its software, the AES [encryption manager] generates all the public and private keys. Why should all the [pairs of] keys [for the Comelec’s poll system] be generated by one man or one group. There’s a potential danger. I will challenge them to improve that setup,” Pimentel said.

A public-private key is a system that allows online participants to secure their communication, according to information technology textbooks.

“[The] public key-private key technology allows [an online sender] to sign a message with their private key. When the recipient receives the message, they can validate the authenticity of the signature because they have the sender’s public key,” according to the online “Techlibrary” at wwww.nusphere.com.

Pimentel said he will ask Comelec, Smartmatic and independent software experts to consider his solution. “[Instead of a] key pair being generated by one software, let us separate it and get another software generate [one of the paired keys]. Why did they not think of that in 2010, if that was doable. Why was it not doable before [to secure our votes],” he said.

He said he would have preferred if Comelec was “open minded [enough] to choose other systems,” but the poll body has settled for the PCOS.

“But for as long as we can afford it, let us [continue with the] automated elections,” he said.