Smartmatic-Comelec tandem should refute Sotto revelations
SEN. Tito Sotto, the Senate Majority Leader, delivered a privilege speech, in a matter of public interest, during the regular session on Tuesday.
Sotto began his 15-minute speech by mentioning the Commission on Elections’ (Comelec) decision to exercise its option-to-purchase (OTP) the vote-counting machines (VCMs) leased and used during the 2016 national elections. He emphatically denounced the Comelec decision.
“This decision is problematic, at the very least, given the numerous unresolved issues that Smartmatic is being accused of in the conduct of the last 2016 national elections. Mr. President, very timely, I suppose, and just recently a concerned and impeccably reliable source handed to me confidential information as to the irregularities that transpired in the May 2016 national elections, which allegedly altered the results of the 2016 national elections.”
The senator continued, “If we don’t do anything to clear the doubts as to the legitimacy of the previous election then we put at risk the accuracy of the 2019 elections.”
He is indeed correct regarding this matter. All the results of our automated elections since 2010, with the Smartmatic-Comelec tandem in control, were purportedly doubtful.
Sotto claimed that his source provided him with system logs showing early transmission of votes and a foreign remote access to the election servers. In his slide presentation, he mentioned the internet protocol (IP) address of 10.11.5.5 and the domain name
He ended his speech by urging the Senate to conduct its own investigation. “I urge this august body to consider the facts presented today and conduct the proper investigation. It is high time that the proper Senate committee investigates the automated election system,” he said.
IP address
An IP address is a unique address that computing devices such as computers, tablets, and smartphones use to identify themselves and communicate with other devices connected in a network running through a protocol called the internet protocol. Any device connected to the network must have a unique IP address within the network. An IP address is analogous to a street address or telephone number in that it is used to uniquely identify an entity.
An IP address is written in “dotted decimal” notation, which consists of four sets of numbers separated by periods, each set representing an 8-bit number ranging from zero to 255.
When a device connects to the network, the system automatically (or sometimes manually designated) assigns the device an IP address. The activities of the device can then be tracked with the IP address.
Going back to the IP address 10.11.5.5, mentioned by Sotto, this IP address is not unique at all. The IP address range of 10.0.0.0 up to 10.255.255.255 pertains to a private intra-network address. This IP address range is used by millions of independently operated networks and are au- once a connected device is used.
Can we identify this IP address now? An IP address has to be unique for it to be traceable and recognizable outside of the private network, meaning across the Internet. IP address 10.11.5.5 is not a unique IP address.
Domain names
Domain names are “easy-to-remember” website addresses. Websites are addresses. However, IP addresses are hard to remember. Thus, an IP address, or a set of IP addresses, is given a domain name. The domain name-IP address relationship is resolved by what we call a domain name system, or simply DNS.
The domain name is owned by Amazon.com, Inc., which is a registered web-hosting facility and reseller of domain names. It maintains four name servers – r1.amazonaws. com, r2. amazonaws.com, u1. amazonaws.com, u2. amazonaws.com. Hence, if you bought a domain name from Amazon.com then your logs will contain an access record to any one of the four name servers.
Could these issues have been avoided in the first place? An unequivocal yes.
These very same issues could have been resolved had the Supreme Court given due course to the petition that I
Petition for mandamus
In the petition for that I filed before the Supreme Court prior to the 2016 national elections, I asked the high court to order the Comelec “to take precautionary steps to ensure that no electronic cheating would take place during the 2016 national and local elections, specifically by making an inventory of the MAC addresses of all its vote- counting machines, computers, servers, and transmission devices which will be used on May 9, 2016.”
Likewise, I asked that Comelec be directed to “make a list of all the IP addresses used in its virtual private network, together with their geographical locations, that were used on May 9, 2016” and to submit to the Supreme Court the inventory of MAC addresses no later than May 9, 2016 and the list of IP addresses used in its network no later than May 10, 2016.
Had the Supreme Court commanded the Comelec to do these things, then we would not have these persistent issues of electronic electoral cheating. The of refused to recognize these issues as valid concerns. The tandem of Smart ma ticComelec should now refute the rev elations made in the Senate.
As Senator Sotto declared, “these issues cannot be ignored.”