There Was No Manipulation/Hacking Of IEBC System – French Bio-Metrics Company

The French bio-metrics firm which supplied the IEBC system used to carry out the canceled August 8 presidential elections has said there was no manipulation of data.

According to the firm, OT-Morpho, an audit of the electronic system used to tally votes showed that the claims made by the opposition were false.

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Opposition leader Raila Odinga had accused the firm of being complicit in the alleged rigging of the election.

In a letter to the French government, Odinga accused OT-Morpho of allowing unauthorized access to its servers and manipulating the transmission of results.

The company’s chief operating officer Frederic Beylier denied this claim.

Speaking to AFP, he said the audit which was undertaken with help from external experts from security software companies had shown the system “in no way suffered manipulation of data, attacks, attempts to penetrate the system or anything of that kind.”

OT-Morpho supplied the IEBC System which includes 45,000 tablets used to identify voters biometrically and other associated system used to transmit the results of votes counted by electoral officials as well as a photograph of the 34A form on which votes were tallied.

Delays in the scaing of these forms which the opposition raised as one of the problems of the system were attributed to the lack of 3G coverage in some parts of Kenya by the firm.

The opposition had also claimed an algorithm was introduced into the system to give the incumbent a constant lead as results were streamed in.

“We obviously checked if there could have been questionable manipulations by any authorized or unauthorized persons and can confirm there was no manipulation of data that could raise questions,” said Beylier.

The company said it had transmitted all its logs to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission and was willing to participate in another external audit under the IEBC’s authority.

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The Supreme Court of Kenya, however, declared the presidential election null and void due to “irregularities and illegalities” in the transmission of results.

While the court is yet to deliver its final judgment detailing what went wrong, OT-Morpho has come out to deny any hacking claims or participation in the rigging of the election.