automated garci

… all the hard work of the candidates and their supporters can be negated by what Information Technology people call the Automated Garci — or the automated dagdag-bawas operation. How dagdag-bawas operations can be pulled off with the automated electoral system in place is discussed by several IT experts of the volunteer group AES Watch in the newly published book Was your vote counted.

Rene Azurin says automated cheating can be accomplished wholesale by introducing subtly altered software code into the voting machine or onto its memory card before the opening polls on election day. This can be done by those who have access to the machines or to the memory cards. According to him, cheating can also be done during the data transmission and consolidation stage if the cheater has access to the private (digital) keys of selected officials.

Many of those machines and CF cards are sent by ordinary public transportation to remote polling places, some up in the mountains, others in distant islands, days before election day. Access to them during transport and at the polling places is easy. Electronic transmission facilities in those remote places are inadequate if not absent.

Gus Lagman says the Smartmatic PCOS can be hijacked. Sixty of these machines were found in the house of a Smartmatic technician right after the elections. In 2010 PCOS machines had an open port. Through an open port a techie with a laptop can connect to the unit and tamper with the software and the CF cards in the machine. CF cards can be stolen easily as proven by the discovery of CF cards in a garbage dump in Cagayan de Oro City. Transmission of precinct election results from remote places to the canvassing machine is vulnerable to tampering as shown by Glenn Chong in Biliran in 2010.

Both Azurin and Lagman say that the Smartmatic system is very vulnerable to internal tampering. For the right incentive, a Comelec official can manipulate the system as to guarantee the election of a paying candidate. That is why their colleagues in the IT circle refer to the automated electoral system as Automated Garci.

A “Hello, Brilly. Hello, Brilly, can you…” call is out of the question. Comelec Chair Brillantes is a trustworthy man. He himself said he is trusted by President Aquino and Vice-President Binay. Besides, he is no IT man. In fact, his staunch defense of Smartmatic’s system with all its flaws shows he is an ignoramus when it comes to IT.

But many of Garci’s accomplices in 2004 remain with the Comelec. There could be techies among them. Members of the Bids and Awards Committee of Comelec that approved the purchase of ballot secrecy folders for the fantastic unit price of 380 are still with the Comelec. Yes, men and women of dubious integrity populate that Constitutional body.

…until May 21 then, by which time the results of the senatorial race shall have become final. Then either I say, “I told you so” or I eat my words.

that’s from oscar lagman jr.’s The final surge.   read too jarius bondoc’s Clean,credible election: Does Brillantes care?  federico pascual’s Source code review vital to poll integrity, jose sison’s Cloud of doubt, inquirer editorial More than legality, and dr. florangel rosario braid’s Automated elections: issues and concerns.

and so this makes sense: Poll cheating laid out: LP, UNA accuse each other of plotting

i’ve been wondering why voters and candidates and the church don’t seem the least bit concerned that brillantes has failed us, cheating hasn’t been ruled out.  is all the technical talk over their heads?  or can it be that because it’s all okay with the prez, then it must be all a-okay?  or maybe it’s not really, but it’s too late to call off elections, bahala na si batman?  argh.

the world is watching, of course.  and as usual, we’re good for a laugh or two.

It’s time for Ladlad

It has been long in coming, but each lesbian, gay, bisexual and trangender Pinoy and Pinay would do themselves well to choose #28 on that long list made up of mostly bogus party-list organizations. It would do us all well too, to vote for the LGBTs in our midst, the ones who are our friends and co-workers, the people we admire and those in our families. I will vote for my best friends and my teachers, I will vote for the fairy godmothers who I grew up with, I will vote for the artists who continue to create, despite. There is every reason to vote for the LGBTs in our lives.

 ~ Katrina S.S.

Why the Philippines Failed?

… In Why Nations Fail, economists Acemoglu and Robinson provide a brilliant explanation on how progress and development is largely a function of ‘inclusive’ — as opposed to extractive — governance. Using their dichotomy, the Philippines clearly falls within the extractive category, whereby the core-elite have blocked appropriate policies, which would have made the country a true democracy, anchored by a large middle class, an entrepreneurial sector, and strong institutions spurring growth and innovation. Therefore, in many ways, the developmental failure of the Philippines has something to do with its weak and divided state, which seldom had the right ‘policy space’ to make optimal economic decisions. Throughout the post-War period, the Philippine state has either been at the mercy of entrenched elites, pushing for particularistic interests and blocking policies/legislations aimed at national development, or international financial institutions (IFIs), which have prescribed counterproductive policies, notably ‘Structural Adjustment Programs’ (SAPs), causing tremendous poverty, social dislocation, agricultural decline and ‘de-industrialization’ across the developing world. Sometimes, the Philippines was at the mercy of both...

~ Richard Javad Heydarian

concepcion herrera-umali stuart (1913-2000)

today is the 100th birthday of my mother nena, and my sibs and i are throwing a party for her, like we did for papa two years ago, like mama and her sibs did for lola concha (of Revolutionary Routes) in 1986, and like lola concha did for lolo tomas in 1977.  my sibs and i not being conventional at all about a lot of things, this is the rare family tradition we find ourselves happily observing.  a fine time to reconnect with the clan, kahit pa incomplete, some in europe, some in america, wish they were all here.

mama and papa met in med school, UST class 1937.  she was the first lady doctor of tiaong quezon.  but the babies came, seven in all, the first in 1940 the last in 1954, and she gave up the doctoring to bring us up, the ever present mother, except when she had to spend time in tiaong to look after coconut and rice lands, and when she went back to school for a degree in psychology because she wanted to do counselling, though she only got to practice on us kids and the occasional friend in trouble. it was also around this time that she started having problems with her eyesight, and she started learning braille.

it was mama who drummed into us: it’s bad form to speak of oneself, i did this i did that.  also, ‘wag ka i-first; last ka dapat kung ikaw ang nagkukuwento.  not i and kuya but kuya and i.  bawal na bawal ding magbuhat ng sariling bangko.  let others do the praising, without prodding, when, then, you truly deserve it.  or something like that.  which of course is so civilized, but certainly not the way to make it quick in this dog-eat-dog world where selling oneself and/or selling out is the peg.

when she was 60, mama was diagnosed with breast cancer, stage 4.  doctors couldn’t give her a year, or even a month, but she lived another 27 years.  read My Mother Survived Cancer Without Chemotherapy in nancy the nurse’s blog.

as eldest daughter of lola concha, mama was deeply pained, and angered, by the tragedies that befell her  younger sister’s guerrilla husband during the japanese occupation and her eldest brother narciso the congressman in the time of the huks and magsaysay.  when lola concha wrote her memoir in spanish, i think mama was relieved; she said it was all so personal, better kept private.  and yet, in her 70s, with her eyesight practically gone, she had us taking turns reading the memoir on tape and, touchtyping, she translated it all, line by line, into english, not just for the family but hopefully for publication.

now also an e-book, Revolutionary Routes: Five stories of incarceration, exile, murder, and betrayal 1891-1980 (2011), Foreword by Reynaldo C. Ileto, is as much mama’s book as lola concha’s and mine.