The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) is on the spot after declining to provide key items during the scrutiny of the servers used in the August 9 polls as ordered by the Supreme Court.
In a report filed by the registrar of the Supreme Court, the Commission was reported to have failed to provide a forensically captured image of the server holding Form 34C used to declare William Ruto as President-elect.
IEBC in its response defended itself noting that such a move would expose its servers to severe vulnerabilities hence making the system vulnerable.
Agents of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Ruto, and representatives of the court were, instead, allowed real-time access to the IEBC live server, raising more questions over the entire exercise.
“IEBC committed to providing a forensic image of form 34C to the court for the parties to apply for access. On September 1, Â the forensic image was availed to court,” read the report in part.
Ballot boxes arriving for the recount at Forodha House
Secondly, the electoral body declined to avail agreements it entered with various technological companies. IEBC explained that they would be going against the Non-Disclosure Agreements hence committing a crime in the process.
The Supreme Court had directed IEBC to provide the said agreements for scrutiny by the agents of the petitions and the court.
“IEBC is hereby directed to avail partnership agreements with its technical partners, list of users, trail, and admin access to provide clarity on the IEBC systems and their usage for review and verification, subject however to any security related issues thereof,” the seven-judge bench ordered then.
The Commission, IEBC, also failed to avail details of owners of the system administration passwords citing that they had been exempted from giving details of the password owners as such an action would breach the privacy of their staff.
In the supreme court order, IEBC was directed to provide copies of the password policies, however, the Commission was at liberty to decline if any security issues arising from the directive.
In a related development, Smartmatic declined to grant access to the IEBC servers to Raila’s agents.
