Given the very serious ramifications of this hacking incident, the priority of focus should be on how to prevent the possible immediate dangers the Filipino voters and the Philippine government are being exposed to. Therefore, when it comes to finding effective ways of prevention from cyber crimes and electronic crimes at the actual/practical technical level, field of expertise of lawyers should not be the first place to look for solutions. Lawyers are experts in the punishments of the crimes done, but not in the technology involved in the prevention of such technology-driven crimes.
With the immensity of the seriousness of the not-understood real dangers that the voters (and the Philippine government itself) are being exposed to as a consequence of the public's and the government's ignorant tolerance of Comelec's level of cyber security ineptitude, even a more drastic move such as dissolving the entire Comelec organization would just be a mere slap in the wrist, aside from the fact that it won't help a bit in seriously finding ways of how to secure the Filipino citizens and the government from the real very serious dangers they are now being exposed to. Of course heads should roll and even more so! But that may come later after the immediate pressing problem has been properly addressed.
Captured by government authorities is one of the hackers who is a 20-year-old I.T. graduate. Perhaps instead of persecuting this young man for his participation in the cyber crime, how about the government authorities utilize his talent to help them implement a far better security for the entire Comelec computer system? They could also perhaps use his skill and influence to help them track his co-hackers. Let them give the young cyber wizard all the support and protection he needs to accomplish these objectives. This a way of not wasting a very valuable talent of a youth and at the same time a means for the cyber wizard lad to redeem himself and use his special skill for good intentions.
Imagine if copies of the database have already found their way into the hands of states who have antagonistic relations with our country, and to think that we have a closely approaching election this coming May 9, 2016? Given the present expertise and manpower the government is employing now to address this problem (assuming they are seriously addressing the problem), would there be enough time to put up a really credible and effective preventive measure against any possible sabotage or manipulation of election results as one possible severe consequence of this worst-in-history data security breach? The ramifications are very serious, therefore the government should prioritize its focus! If they need to hire foreign expertise in order to augment and speed up the job of protecting the Filipino citizen voters and the government and the elections, then they should have done it already by now.
----------
"Leaked info can't be used to rig elections." --Comelec officials
Stolen voters' info may not more likely be used in the rigging but may more possibly be used in the area of faking of voters' I.D. that could possibly result in cases where some late comer voters will be surprised to learn that someone had earlier voted using their stolen identity.
It is not primarily the voters' information in the stolen database that exposes the coming elections to a possible rigging. But it is the fact that a 20-year-old I.T. graduate was able to penetrate through the computer security system of Comelec that puts into very serious vulnerability the now highly questionable strength of the Comelec's entire computer network security system (not to mention the similar vulnerability of other computer network system of other agencies of our government). Because if a fresh graduate-level I.T. expertise was able to break through the security system being put in-place, then just imagine what would real cyber criminals with top-level of expertise (who are for instance fully well sponsored by a certain group or a state) would enthusiastically be able to do to penetrate and sneakily install a votes-consolidation-interceptor virus code to manipulate or sabotage the results of the elections.
