A new revelation reveals great possibility that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) sold voters’ data to politicians, who unscrupulously used the same to influence voters with targeted messages.
Strathmore University’s Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) released a biometrics and privacy report which primarily features privacy implications of biometric voter registration in the country’s 2017 election process.
The report places great policy worry on the situation as there is no data protection legislation to operationalise the Article 31 right to privacy enshrined in the Kenyan Constitution.
“As such, there is no framework to protect the biometric and alphanumeric data in the voter register,” the report says.
It’s important to note that a redacted version of the voter register is available for sale as provided for in the Access to Information Act. This however does not include the biometric data in the register.
According to the report, unsolicited political messages sent on behalf of political aspirants by Content Service Providers (CSPs), featured the alphanumeric data in the voter register, a reality that now raises concerns of whether adequate mechanisms exist to protect the biometric and alphanumeric data in the voter register.
This report sprouts data privacy fears as was in Facebook’s Cambridge Anaytica’s scandal where an algorithm to profile users based on their Facebook data for political messaging was done.CIPIT report suggests out of a total of 228 respondents who had received political messages during the 2017 general elections, 96 percent had not shared their phone numbers with any politician.
Observers believe that there was high accuracy with the political messaging. Part of the key details that made this possible is the legal name, age, county, constituency and polling station of the target recipient, who in this case was a registered voter.
Accessing phone numbers and ID numbers for millions of Kenyans is not a big deal. Many of our data is in visitors’ registers at security checks in popular buildings, with mobile money agents, mobile money applications and telecommunication companies.
The CIPIT report reveals what remains is the exact voting location.“It is possible that political aspirants were able to obtain this data from the rogue officials at the Commission,” the report states. A local daily quoted unnamed politicians who admitted that they bought data on each voter’s location at 3 shillings.
In its defense, IEBC told The Star that “our data is sufficiently secured.” The agency’s Communications Manager Andrew Limo said they are yet to receive complaints that the data they have had been breached or compromised to warrant retribution.