Senator Francis ‘’Tol’’ Tolentino on Tuesday, January 11 expressed fears that the alleged breach of Commission on Elections (Comelec) sensitive data could possibly affect the May 2022 national and local elections.

This followed Tolentino’s filing of a Senate resolution asking the Senate leadership to direct the Senate Electoral Reforms and People’s Participation committee ‘’to conduct an inquiry, in aid of legislation, into the alleged hacking of sensitive data of the Comelec which could potentially impact the May 2022 polls.

Tolentino emphasized the urgent need to determine whether Comelec has the capacity and strong data encryption to prevent any untoward incident that may affect the upcoming elections.

In a related development, Senator Aquilino Pimentel III also said he is joining the call of presidential aspirant Senator Emmanuel Pacquiao in his for ‘’Comelec to give a very clear report on what happened, allow and involve political parties to investigate what happened, so that we can all be sure that this incident will not happen again.’’

‘’Comelec must improve its online defenses as soon as possible (ASAP),’’ he added.

Pimentel and Pacquiao head the Partido Demokratikong Pilipino (PDP)-Laban Pimentel wing.

In his resolution, Tolentino said the accuracy and efficiency of the electoral process is crucial to upholding the essence of democracy, because the authenticity of the results of elections in terms of reflecting the true sentiments of the people regarding their choice of leadership relies on the soundness of the system by which elections are held.’’

Tolentino stressed that protecting personal information is a matter of national security and the government has a duty to protect the country and the personal information of the people.

He cited various reports alleged that a group of hackers on January 8, 2022 were able to allegedly breach the servers of the Commission on Elections (“Comelec”) which may have compromised sensitive voter information stored in such servers.

it was reported that 60 gigabytes of information was downloaded through the said hacking incident that included voter data, network diagrams, IP addresses, list of privileged users, domain admin credentials, list of all passwords and domain policies, access to ballot handling dashboard, and QR Code captures of the bureau of canvassers with login and password.

The Tolentino resolution stated that Comelec also suffered data breaches in the past – during the 2016 local and national elections when hackers under the banner “Anonymous Philippines” hacked into the website of the Comelec, defaced it, and downloaded voter information from its servers; and in 2017 when the computer of Office of the Election Officer in Wao, Lanao Del Sur was stolen which contains data from the Voter Registration System (VRS), voter search applications, and National List of Registered Voters (NLRV);

The resolution, likewise, stated that it is imperative to investigate the continuous proliferation and alarming trend of cyber-attacks against the Government and private firms in the country and put an end in the manipulation, abuse and misuse of pertinent information of the public to the advantages of these online lawbreakers.