THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) website has been down since Saturday for routine maintenance.
On Monday, the poll body said on its Twitter account that voters who want to inquire about their respective profile and precinct information may contract them directly at (02) 525-92-96.
Comelec did not say when their system will be back up.
On March 27, hackers' group Anonymous Philippines hacked and defaced the Comelec website, exposing the data of over 55 million registered voters.
A suspect, a 23-year-old IT graduate, was arrested by the National Bureau of Investigation and was charged with violation of the Anti-Cybercrime Prevention Law by the Manila Prosecutor's Office.
Millions of registered voters, IT and software companies have expressed fear about the so-called "ComeLeak" or the biggest data breach in history as it can put millions of voters susceptible to schemes, blackmail, extortion and other illegal activities.
On Monday, the Center Law Philippines called as "incomprehensible" the Comelec's silence over the Comelec website hacking and the "ComeLeak".
"It's almost a month now since the incident happened. Yet until now, the Comelec has yet to give formal notification to all the registered voters regarding the breach...The Comelec's silence is simply incomprehensible," Center Law executive director Romel Bagares said.
Bagares, through a formal written demand, asked the poll body to notify and explain to the public the results of the massive data leakage.
"Through this letter, our client now formally demands that the Comelec notify as required by the law, the Data Privacy Commission and the 55 million voters. a)of this hacking incident and the result of the massive leak b) the measures taken by it to address the breach c) and its officials accountable for its compliance with the law," the letter states.
Center Law reminded the poll body that under Section 30 of the Data privacy act, it is a crime to conceal security breaches involving sensitive information, with a penalty of imprisonment of one year up to six months or five years and a fine of not less than 500,000 and not more than 1 million.
Since it has already been a month since the incident happened and the elections are approaching, the group demanded the Comelec to explain within 24 hours.
"Given the urgency of this matter, we ask the Comelec to take immediate steps to do so, within 24 hours from receipt of this letter," the letter reads.
On Thursday, a website made by Lulzsec Pilipinas that revealed the poll body’s entire database online containing information of voters circulated on social media.
To access the data, the website only requires visitors to fill two out of the three fields: first name, last name and maternal name. If the data is included in the website, the page would show a voter's personal data, that includes birth date, address, date of registration, fingerprint information and passport information.
Comelec Chairman, Andres Bautista downplayed the leak and said that the information made available by the site "is really public information."
Bautista added that those kinds of information are also available in other government agencies' website. (Sunnex)