Smartmatic International which was contracted by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to supply the Kenya Integrated Elections Management System (KIEMS) kits has denied Azimio la Umoja party leader Raila Odinga access to its servers.
In a letter dated Wednesday, August 31 addressed to IEBC Chief Executive Officer, Marjan Hussein, Smartmatic said it will not provide access to the provision of images on its servers, despite an order issued by the Supreme Court.
“We would like to clarify that such images contain software owned and copyrighted by Smartmatic and is thus IP protected.
"Providing full access would infringe our intellectual property rights,” the statement read.
It as well as explained that providing third parties access to its source code, and security features including transmission certificates and encryption keys, would render the system insecure - as it is today- for any future use in Kenya or anywhere else in the world.
Access to its servers would also jeopardize elections in other countries that are using or have used its systems.
It, however, pledged to offer access to all physical tally reports which it said were available online in real-time and political parties and certified NGO election observers can use them to audit the results independently.
In the letter to Marjan, the company which has been caught in the middle of the controversies surrounding the 2022 General Election assured that it is committed to the transparency and integrity of Kenyan elections.
Smartmatic also recommended that IEBC provides all collected data related to the results transmission system and all results transmission system logs.
The logs under IEBC's administration, the company argued, would be sufficient to extensively audit the results transmission system and verify that it worked efficiently.
Raila Odinga through his petition in court had asked the Supreme Court to provide an order compelling IEBC to give them full access to forensic images for the IEBC servers.
Justice Isaac Lenaola's order stemmed from the allegations that IEBC’s election technology was deliberately compromised by non-commission staff and foreigners.
IEBC was directed to give the applicants supervised access to any servers at the National Tallying Centre for storing and transmitting voting information and copies of its technology system security policy comprising but not limited to password policy, password matrix, and owners of system administration passwords.
It was also compelled system users and levels of access, and workflow chats for identification, tallying, transmission, and posting of portals and any API’s that had been integrated and the list of human interfaces and controls for such intervention.
The electoral agency finally agreed to grant Odinga access to its servers after his lawyer James Orengo alleged that it had blocked the presidential candidate from accessing its servers thus disobeying court orders.
