Bautista blamed for Comelec hacking

Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Andres Bautista should take full responsibility for a data hacking breach of the poll body’s website that compromised millions of voters early this year, an outspoken poll commissioner said.

Commissioner Rowena Guanzon said that among those discussed during the body’s last en banc meeting earlier this week was a summons by the National Privacy Commission (NPC) investigating the March 27 hacking incident.

Bautista and fellow commissioners Christian Robert Lim and Al Parreño were among those called to appear before the NPC probe aimed at finding out how the website was defaced and the database of 55 million voters were publicly posted online.

But Guanzon said Bautista should take full responsibility for the incident, saying: “The Data Privacy Act has penalties and it says there that the head of office is responsible for informing the users, if there’s a hacking.”