Invite critics to punch holes in PCOS system

Devoid of any interpretation, what the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas did was simple. It transferred one billion in dollar reserves from low-interest U.S. Treasury bills to higher-yielding IMF bonds. In short, it made an investment that would earn more money.

But then the BSP and Malacañang broadcast that the country was lending $1 billion to the IMF’s $456-billion European crisis kitty. That’s when all the hullaballoo began.

Critics wailed that poor Philippines, in need of all the cash it could get, was giving away, not reinvesting or lending, a cool billion. It was even wrongly made to look like the $1 billion, though not part of the $42-billion (P1.8-trillion) national budget but of the $79-billion gross international reserve, could have been rechanneled to poverty alleviation. “Pasiklab (Showoff),” foes derided the Aquino administration for helping bail out Europeans to be able to trade anew with the Philippines.

Oh well.

* * * Last Friday I wrote about the breakdown of law and order, citing among others the serial killing of six Maguindanao Massacre witnesses. That day too, Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda was reported as saying that the government already has offered witnesses protection, so must not be blamed if they’re killed after declining it. “Palace on slain witnesses: We can only do so much,” The

STAR aptly headlined the report. Lacierda could have taken a bolder line and used stronger words. Something like, “We will get those killers even if they choose to hide in hell.” But being truthful to the admin’s mood, he expressed instead its timidity against crime. Meaning, criminals can have a field day. But witnesses will have to concede that protection can only be given if they leave their homes, jobs and identities for “safe houses.”

* * * In December 2011 Iran claimed to have nabbed a U.S. spy drone by electronic means. But the Pentagon kept dismissing it as a hoax, since the photographed aircraft was so dent-less to have crashlanded. Last week Texas university students commandeered a similar unmanned aerial vehicle, in response to a dare by Homeland Security. The collegians employed spoofing — beaming false messages to the UAV’s GPS — to glide it into soft landing. Their engineering professor and the security honchos supervised the experiment, according to science magazines.

What’s it to us Filipinos? Plenty. If school hams can bring down intact a sophisticated surveillance gizmo, what more expert hackers making automated election machines cheat?

Last Friday senators watched yet another demo of the Precinct Count Optical Scanner ( PCOS). Some were impressed, others not with the machine of Smartmatic Inc., the controversial Venezuelan maker. All saw only how fast it could count 17 ballots of the lawmakers present. It was 100-percent accurate, according to Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, chairman of the suffrage committee and once a victim of poll fraud. That surpasses the 2008 Election Automation Law requirement of 99.995-percent precision.

Still Pimentel was quick to point up the limitations of the PCOS test-run. The senators had not checked for the 500 to 1,000 ballots that the 82,000 machines would each be counting on Election Day 2013. Or for durability from rough delivery handling and prolonged use in humid or rainy precinct conditions. Or for stability in simultaneous, potentially clogging data transmission to the Comelec central computer.

Ho-hum, all that had been done in 2010. At least, that’s what typical lowtech Filipino voters believe about the first automated poll that year, when the same PCOS units were leased. Misunderstood is that the PCOS was never fully tested back then. For, many salient provisions of the 2008 law had been discarded from the start or last minute.

Like, the Comelec and Smartmatic opened the PCOS source code for scrutiny only days before the balloting, not the stated six months. Too, the accompanying automation of the voters’ list was never undertaken. How many voters were disenfranchised as usual due to missing names and precincts was never determined. Secret markings to authenticate ballots were junked because of printing delays. Switched off was the ballot printed receipt, which would have told the voter if the PCOS read his votes right. (Of course, that receipt could have been swapped for cash from the votebuying candidate, but that’s another issue altogether.) The random audit — one PCOS machine in every precinct cluster, or five percent of all the precincts — was never completed.

That’s why info-technologists persist today in questioning the integrity of the PCOS. It is a mere scanner or image reader, nothing compared to the remote-controlled avionics of a UAV. A PCOS is far easier to sabotage than a complicated encrypted bank ATM, even if the latter is oftener the target of electronic fraud attack.

To get answers, the senators should have checked what the PCOS would do if fed fake ballots. Or if ballots would still be correctly read despite ink smudges and printing misalignment. Or if tallies would frazzle if candidates have similar surnames, usual in local election contests.

Best, the senators should have invited the complainers to try to hack the PCOS. Successful hackers could have been amply rewarded (as suggested by reader William Yao) for saving the Comelec the P1.8-billion cost of the 82,000 units. If they failed to crack the PCOS, then forever they might hold their peace.

Incidentally the Pentagon has changed its tune. From denying the downing of a UAV in Iran, it is now demanding the return of a U.S. state property. And last March the Islamic Republic proclaimed to have fabricated its own drone, capable of military and border patrol runs.

* * * Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 810 a.m., DWIZ, (882-AM).

E-mail: jariusbondoc@gmail.com