Smartmatic Allegedly Refuses to Open Servers Hosting Form 34C

Thursday, September 1, 2022 –Voting technology supplier Smartmatic has denied parties full access to server hosting Form 34C which also has tallied presidential results.

Through a letter to the parties referenced to by Nation.Africa on Thursday September 1, the supplier of the kits, Smartmatic Holding B.V, indicated that it would be an infringement to allow full access to their servers saying it is not safe on their part as technology providers.

“As per your request regarding the provision of image of NTC server(s), we would like to clarify taht such images contain software owned and copyrighted by Smartmatic and is thus IP protected. Providing full access would infringe our intellectual property rights,” partly reads the letter signed by F. Gunnik, the company’s managing director.

In the letter dated August 31, 2022, the company said the backend system is restrictive since it could be compromised by outsiders to the detrimental of their image.

This was happening amid standoff at the Supreme Court where petitioner’s Lawyer Philip Murgor told the seven-judge bench that they had not been accorded full access and that in the few areas they had managed to stretch their hands to, there were several deletions which are of a large magnitude and ought to be considered in court.

“IEBC failed to provide forensic image off all the servers. They provided a limited access to server 5 and we observed a large number of deletion. We suspect the delay and non-compliance could be to delete vital data and when time runs out they may provide irrelevant information,” said Mr Murgor.

On her part, blogger Pauline Njoroge posted a letter she had reportedly received from a reliable source indicating that the Smartmatic management was not going to allow this access.

The independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission IEBC has a total of eight servers.

https://twitter.com/paulinenjoroge/status/1565219733150089216?s=20&t=XU7No6NekZGm1fjJjNfixQ