The National Privacy Commission noted that the pieces of evidence gathered by its Complaints and Investigation Division proved that the Comelec servers or its systems were not breached, as opposed to the report of Manila Bulletin that falsely claimed that the hacked data included information that could have affected the 2022 elections.
Top officials of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) told a House committee hearing on Wednesday, Feb. 2, that the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has already ruled out any breach of its servers, contrary to a report of the Manila Bulletin.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said while Comelec’s servers may not have been hacked, the poll body should remain on guard against possible unauthorized access to its data as the May polls draw closer.
During a congressional hearing on Friday, Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez asked how the Manila Bulletin was able to "verify" the hacking of its servers but the publication was not able to address the query.
The DICT said preliminary findings suggest that a hack was not possible due to the Vote-Counting Machine (VCM) system being offline and the lack of existing data on the Automated Election System (AES) that could be breached.
In a statement, BHW party-list representative Angelica Natasha Co said the debunked Comelec hacking claim “is an attempt to cast seeds of doubt in the minds of the public on an IT matter that is beyond their understanding.”
Agusan del Norte representative Lawrence Fortun said in a statement that the Manila Bulletin report was apparently erroneous as “[i]t appears now the alleged hacked files do not exist.”
