Uhuru Legacy Under Threat Over Ksh6B Damned Pet Project

An expert witness summoned to give his views on the petition filed against the Ksh6 billion Huduma Number project has dismissed it as a project that was doomed to fail from the start.

The Standard reported on Tuesday, September 24, that Anand Venkatanatayanan, an expert in cybersecurity and computer fraud forensic analysis, claimed that there was no guarantee that the system would work, given the high rate of failure by similar projects.

Ananda reportedly told the high court that Kenyans have no guarantee at all that their information, including personal contact details, would be secure under the National Integrated Identity System (NIIMS).

Anand Venkatanatayanan testifying before the High Court. He alleged that the NIIMS system was archaic and doomed to collapse with time.

Citing the case of Aaadhar (NIIMS system used in India) which has been subject to systemic failure numerous times, he stated that natural changes in human beings, the likelihood of the system giving different results concerning the same person, and the government's hoarding of information on the project was a sure way to ensure Kenyans will not benefit from the expensive project.

He further told justices Pauline Nyamweya, Weldon Korir, and Mumbi Ngugi that the vulnerabilities in the project and the government's withholding of information would only end up providing lucrative avenues to hackers intent on milking millions from the government and Kenyans.

"It is axiomatic in computer security that nothing is truly secure and there are only costs and benefits of hoarding data. Centralized databases such as Aadhar and NIIMS, however, hoard so much data that the cost-benefit ratios tilt definitely in the favor of the attackers," he intimated.

Anand further claimed that the government had failed to notice that other countries have learned about the dangers of handling all their information in one basket and have started decentralizing, while the Kenyan government is keen on centralizing information (storing all their information in one system).

Seeking to further convince the court, he alleged that the NIIMS system that the government had procured was from OT Morpho, the same company that provided the Aadhaar system, and checks on the Indian system had proved that the company had exaggerated majority of the features in it.

"NIIMS is an archaic design compared to modern-day system architectures and can be thought of a horse-bungee drawn by a lame horse on the digital highway. That it would fail and would fall behind is the foregone conclusion,"  he testified.

President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the NIIMS system in April 2019, in Machakos County, and ensured Kenyans of the safety of their information.

A model posing with the Huduma Card. The government had stated that the card would enable Kenyans to access all government services using the card.

It, however, generated plenty of controversies and court cases, the most notable one being by the Nubian community who filed a case in court after being locked out of registration.

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