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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider Smartmatic maintains AES 'safe and secure' for May 2022 polls

Smartmatic maintains AES 'safe and secure' for May 2022 polls

Published Apr 29, 2022 05:01 pm

The Commission on Elections' (Comelec) technology provider for the automated election system (AES) Smartmatic reiterated on Friday, April 29 that the AES remaiins "safe and secure" for the upcoming May 2022 elections.

Comelec Chairman Saidamen Pangarungan and Commissioner George Garcia during the walkthrough of the VCM and CCS production and deployment process held at Comelec warehouse, Sta. Rosa, Laguna March 14, 2022.(Ali Vicoy)

In a statement, Christian Lim, Smartmatic spokesperson said that any claims that the AES was hacked are false.

"Comelec never shares this electoral data with Smartmatic, so claims that sensitive data, such as the voter list, was stolen from Smartmatic is also unfounded," he said.

"Smartmatic has never had access to any voter data or voter list. ALL data for the 2022 elections is generated by Comelec. It is never shared with any other institution, vendor or third party," he added.

Commissioner Rey Bulay disclosed last week on Friday, April 22, that no information that will affect the upcoming May 2022 polls was accessed in the so-called Smartmatic data breach.

During a press briefing, Bulay said that this was according to the report of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and Smartmatic. This was after the poll body appeared before the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms and People's Participation chaired by Senator Imee Marcos.

Smartmatic said that the recently arrested criminals were attempting to scam the public and candidates using non-classified data from Comelec’s website, old QA test data and forged information.

"For the benefit of the country, we urge caution when addressing the public. Making false or unverified claims – even accidentally – not only helps to propagate the same criminal scams, but also harms the credibility of the elections," Lim said.

Related Tags

smartmatic data breach AES 2022 elections 2022 presidential elections 2022 polls Comelec 2022 national and local polls Commission on Elections (Comelec) 2022 NATIONAL AND LOCAL ELECTIONS Commission on Elections automated election system automated election system (AES) smartmatic
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