Smartmatic declines to give full access to IEBC servers

Smartmatic International, the Dutch based company procured by IEBC to provide technology for the August 9th General Election, has declined the order to allow Raila Odinga's team full access to their servers as ordered by the Supreme Court.

During a status conference on Tuesday, the apex court asked the electoral body to, among other things, grant the petitioners access to any server used to capture images of Forms 34C.

In a letter to commission Smartmatic's Managing Director F. Gunnick noted that providing full access to the servers would be an infringement on their property rights.

Gunnick added that allowing access to their information to a third party would also render it insecure for any future use. 

“Providing full access would infringe our intellectual property rights,” reads the statement from Smartmatic. 

“Providing third parties access to our source code, and security features including transmission certificates and encrypted keys would render the system insecure – as it is today – for any future use in Kenya or anywhere else in the world. In addition to violating our IP rights, this would also jeopardize elections in other countries that are using or have used our systems," it further stated. 

Gunnick however recommended that the Wafula Chebukati led body makes all "data related to the Results Transmission System and the Results Transmission System logs" available which he stated should be sufficient to audit the results transmission and substantiate that its work was above boad. 

Gunnick further defended the accuracy of the results highlighting that "all physical tally reports were available" to everyone including political parties and election observers who were able to tally the results independently.