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Comelec to turn over source code to Central Bank Friday


The master copy of the software that will be used in the May elections will officially be turned over to the Central Bank on Friday for safekeeping until after the polls have ended, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) said. In an interview with GMANews.TV on Thursday, Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said poll body chairman Jose Melo will turn over the master copy of the source code to the Central Bank at 3 p.m. Friday. "A Central Bank representative will be here tomorrow and will receive the source code from us," he said, adding that the same representative will bring the source code to the office of the BSP along Roxas Boulevard where it will be kept in a vault until the elections pass. The source code is composed of human readable instructions that programmers will write and rewrite as needed. This source code is then converted ("compiled" is the technical term) into executable code, which is what the computer will actually run. Since the executable code cannot be readily understood by humans, the source code is crucial in determining whether the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines do the counting of votes properly and that there are no holes or trap doors that can corrupt data or be used for cheating. Republic Act 9339 requires the Comelec to keep the master copy of the source code in escrow with the BSP. Jimenez said this is done to ensure that the poll body has an "untouched" and "pristine" benchmark copy of the source code. "It's the standard against which you measure all other source codes in all the different machines," he said. He said that if one were to conduct the random manual audit and extract the hash in every machine, he or she must compare the code with the code that is in escrow. "If it's the same, alam mong mapagkakatiwalaan mo yung makina na yun (you'll know that you can trust that machine)," he said. - Kim Tan/RSJ/KBK, GMANews.TV

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