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Safaricom refutes NASA claims on August 8th Polls
Safaricom, has refuted allegations made by National Super Alliance (NASA) leader Raila Odinga on Tuesday saying that Safaricom was contracted…
Safaricom, has refuted allegations made by National Super Alliance (NASA) leader Raila Odinga on Tuesday saying that Safaricom was contracted by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to transmit election results from the Kenya Integrated Electoral Management Systems (KIEMS) kits at the polling stations to the IEBC servers, but Safaricom’s system never relayed results to IEBC’s public web portal.
NASA leaded further claimed that the data that was to be conveyed via Virtual Private Network (VPN) in order to ensure that there was no tampering with the results before they reached the servers, one of the VPNs was terminated at a cloud server registered in Spain but operated from France under the control of OT-Morpho. Both VPNs were fully paid for by the IEBC. However, the VPN from Safaricom terminating locally was never set up.
Safaricom has since distanced itself from the claims by NASA. In a statement by Safaricom CEO, Bob Collymore, Mr. Collymore stated that Safaricom’s role in last general election to provide a dedicated secure tunnel to transmit the encrypted data from the KIEMs kits to the IEBC server, also known as a Virtual Private Network or VPN.
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He added that the Telco Giant was required to provide technical support to the IEBC before, during and after the general election day including a dedicated project manager and provide a record of transmission from all the SIM Cards provided to the IEBC under the contract for purposes of the General Election.
For further clarity Mr. Collymore added that the country was divided into zones, allocated to Safaricom, Telkom Kenya and Airtel Kenya, collectively known as the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs). All KIEMs kits had two SIM cards with one MNO as primary provider and the other MNO as secondary. Each of the MNOs established a VPN to transmit results from areas where they were either a primary or secondary provider.
“The role of the MNOs was therefore merely to transmit the results from the KIEMs kit to the IEBC servers. In accordance with the contract with IEBC, all the mobile operators connected their VPNs and transmitted the data to the IEBC cloud servers,” he said.
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The role of the Mobile National Operators was to transmit the results from the Kenya Integrated Electoral Management Systems kit to the IEBC servers. In accordance with the contract with IEBC, All the mobile operators connected their VPNs and transmitted the data to the IEBC cloud servers
Robert Collymore, CEO Safaricom
On the issue around the theft of 100 KIEMS kits Mr. Collymore said, there was nothing required for Safaricom to report and in any event, if any KIEMS kits were stolen it the responsibility of IEBC to make such a report and further notify the MNOs to deactivate the SIMs.
He added that the telco was deeply concerned that the NASA statement has recklessly gone ahead to mention innocent Safaricom staff members needlessly endangering them and their families and termed the action as callous and unnecessary.