CA independence

By now, Court of Appeals (CA) Associate Justice Noel Tijam should be used to being the subject of speculations.

The CA associate justice faced much detraction when he took over the case regarding the appeal of Lance Corporal Daniel Smith who was convicted by a lower court  of raping a Filipina in Subic in 2005. Tijam replaced CA Associate Justice Vicente Veloso who pulled out of the case just as the ruling was about to be handed down.

Justice Tijam was similarly pelted with brickbats in connection with his acquittal of former Congressman Jose Villarosa who was charged in connection with the alleged killing of the two sons of his political rival Ricardo Quintos. The latter complained that the appellate court may have acted with haste in dismissing the charges. He said it took the lower court more than eight years to hear the case but it took the CA just a short period of time to reverse the finding of guilty.

In both controversies, Justice Tijam appears to have been perceived as acting in accordance with the interests of the Palace. The insinuations are downright unfair to the CA justice and something must done to dispel them.

In the meantime, the good justice appears to be headed for another controversy.

This time, the issue involves the controversial Mayor Pedro Cuerpo of Rodriguez, Rizal.

It will be recalled that Cuerpo was suspended by the Rizal provincial board following accusations that he was charging fees that were “ultra vires” or “outside of his powers” for the use of the 19-hectare Rizal provincial sanitary landfill located in his town. The position of the Rizal Board was backed by Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez and won the support of the League of Provinces of the Philippines.

Cuerpo, however, appealed the suspension before the Office of the President. And despite earlier pronouncements that the Palace would stay out of the row, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita ordered Cuerpo reinstated. The Rizal board questioned the move by Ermita before the appellate court, asking for a temporary restraining order or an injunction, noting its apprehension that a bias in favor of Cuerpo on the part of the Palace might unduly prolong the row.

Justice Tijam denied the prayer for a TRO and instead directed the Office of the President to resolve Cuerpo’s appeal within 30 days in accordance with prescribed procedures and sanctions.

The 30-day period lapsed last June 22. The Palace has allegedly failed to resolve the issue within the time prescribed by Justice Tijam.

The associate justice’s next move on the case after the Palace’s failure to abide by his 30-day deadline is being watched. And there is a looming apprehension that the justice might move in a way that can be perceived as favoring the Palace interest again, as in the other controversial cases that came the way of his sala.

The looming view is unfair. We are confident that Justice Tijam will move quickly to assert the independence of the CA and its impartiality. It is important that the CA continues to enjoy the confidence of the public as an independent body, free from political pressure. We hope Justice Tijam succeeds in doing this.

ATM breach

A few months back, my mom was complaining that someone withdrew all her money in her savings account which she learned when she tried to withdraw using her automated teller machine (ATM) card. Her card was always with her and nobody knew her numeric password or PIN code. The only possible explanation. Somebody was able to copy her PIN and all other information that was stored in her card.

In short, she was probably a victim of skimming. When you slide your ATM card into the terminal’s card slot, a skimmer placed inside it will read all the account information stored electronically on the magnetic stripe, plus, depending on the sophistication, record your personal identification number, or PIN, as you punch it in on the ATM keypad. Getting the PINs is the key step for identity thieves. It lets criminals encode stolen account information onto blank ATM cards and withdraw piles of cash from compromised accounts.

Skimmers are small, now the size of a paper, and can be bought online for as low as $300.

Just recently, the security of the ATM system was once again breached, this time in the United States although it does not mean that it is not yet happening here. Hackers broke into Citibank’s network of ATMs inside 7-Eleven stores in California and stole customers’ PIN codes.

The scam netted the alleged identity thieves millions of dollars. They were able to access PINs by attacking the back-end computers responsible for approving the cash withdrawals. This is not the first time though that this scheme has happened in the US. The problem has become widespread they say.

Hackers who are becoming more and more brash are now targeting the ATM system’s infrastructure, which is increasingly built on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system and allows machines to be remotely diagnosed and repaired over the Internet.

Despite industry standards that call for protecting PINs with strong encryption — which means encoding them to cloak them to outsiders — some ATM operators apparently aren’t properly doing that. The PINs seem to be leaking while in transit between the automated teller machines and the computers that process the transactions, according to US news reports.

All that’s known is they broke into the ATM network through a server at a third-party processor, which means they probably didn’t have to touch the ATMs at all to pull off the heist.

What that means for consumers is that their PINs were stolen from machines that showed no signs of tampering they could detect. In previous PIN thefts, thieves generally took steps that might draw notice — sending “phishing” e-mails, or installing false-front keypads, or even tiny cameras on ATMs.

If this happened to my mom only recently, it is safe to conclude that skimming is still a threat in this country and all ATM cardholders are potential victims. Should we all give up banking convenience and return to the good old days of passbooks? What have banks and ATM operators done to protect our identity? We’ve been so used to hearing about credit card fraud that we haven’t realized that identity theft using ATM cards, which are more mainstream, may be a bigger problem.

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