Hi Harry,

Not being a lawyer please indulge my ignorance, when you get an ID card it is that the public can confirm who you say you are therefore it is not a private but a public record.

When you register as a voter you are going to elect public office bearers therefore your voter registration information is public information.

I hear you on the issue of getting targeted but which is the greater evil the likelihood of you getting evicted or the likelihood of an election being compromised?

My take is that the voter, SIM card, ID, passport, prison, land ownership and motor vehicle information need to be made publicly available for scrutiny by all and sundry with a means to monitor who has accessed the data (IPv4).  All the data I have mentioned is available to a select few which means that the playing field is therefore uneven. 

With a select few having access to the data is more harmful especially since there is no way of any of us knowing who they are or what is their agenda. It truly pains me when a nation with such great minds at times like this reduce themselves to rock painters.

In the run up to the last censors we ran what we called the "tribe Kenya" campaign which resulted in the ministry of planning being forced to define a new tribe called Kenya, whose code is 722, for those who wanted to respond to the tribe question as "Kenya" and not other. In addition the training materials for the enumerators where changed to indicated that no one should be forced to provide a specific tribe and neither where they to make any assumptions based on name.

After the results where released it was recorded that 612,000 households across the country are members of the tribe "kenya".  If I had a way of contacting this fellow tribes men/women of mine then we would be in a better position to plan our development and representation, which is one of the reasons that I am an advocate of making this data public.

In closing, we keep questioning the results of the various opinion polls done by a myriad of organisations with all of us raising issues on sample distribution, ethnicity, gender and the like and more critically are they registered voters.  This is a very simple issue to solve if the voter register was publicly available and merged with the SIM register, all we would ask you to do is respond to an electronic opinion poll using your mobile phone.  The results could then be tallied and a comprehensive report provided that would answer many of the current contentious issues.

Regards

 

Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya

Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696

---

From: Harry Karanja <kkairo@gmail.com>
To: robertyawe@yahoo.co.uk
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Sent: Tuesday, 12 February 2013, 6:35
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Has IEBC Voter Register Been Compromised

On interrogation of legislation I've actually found that the Kenya Communication (Amendment) Act imposed stiff penalties for unauthorized access of data. So whether it came from retail agents or telcos (which is highly improbable) this MP is not supposed to have my data. I'd also discount the idea of cell broadcasting - which to the best of my knowledge had not been activated in Kenya for commercial use. The SMS originated from a UK number.

What is indisputable is that the aspiring MP accessed my personal data without authorization. The next challenge is who should be held accountable and how do I do this?  As mentioned earlier, targeted campaigning or marketing is only one use of this data - but what if someone based on my surname surmises that I do not fit into the electoral map, will there be another form of targeting to evict me from that constituency? (Here lies the futility of SIM registration as these SMS can easily be sent from UK or India)

The fears I have are real, for its happened before, and as most on this list can attest, technology has the power to make this process more efficient.

Regards, 

Harry Karanja

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 11, 2013, at 10:40 AM, Edith Adera <eadera@idrc.ca> wrote:

Harry,

 

Indeed the sources are many as others have said. Do we have a data protection law (and FOI law) in place? Or the 10^th parliament left “hurriedly” without enacting it?

 

The scenarios of how an individual voter can be targeted are many and scary, to say the least.

 

Edith

 

From: kictanet [mailto:kictanet-bounces+eadera=idrc.ca@lists.kictanet.or.ke] On Behalf Of Harry Karanja
Sent: February 10, 2013 10:44 PM
To: Edith Adera
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: [kictanet] Has IEBC Voter Register Been Compromised

 

Listers,

 

This morning I received the oddest message. Through a bulk sms provider, one of the aspirants for MP in my constituency sent me an SMS appealing me to vote for him in the upcoming elections? Now I say odd because to the best of my knowledge I have never communicated to this politician my number and my constituency. In fact the only person I have ever given this dual information is the IEBC during voter registration. 

 

Which begs the question, could IEBC or its registration clerks be making voter registers available to politicians for consideration or otherwise? I'm also curious if this is an isolated event or its happening elsewhere?

 

Now I don't need to emphasize on the very serious implications if politicians are in possession of such specific data on the electorate. I previously blogged (http://www.startupkenya.info/2010/08/chopping-up-big-green-giant-safaricom.html) on the dangers of telcos in possession of too much personal data, but it is nothing compared to politicians with this data especially in a country that has experienced deadly post election violence. 

 

I'm curious what measures IEBC has in place for the protection of our personal information and if my experience this morning portends the compromise of all future governmently held e-data?

Regards, 

Harry Karanja

 

Sent from my iPad

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KICTANetiquette : Adhere to the same standards of acceptable behaviors online that you follow in real life: respect people's times and bandwidth, share knowledge, don't flame or abuse or personalize, respect privacy, do not spam, do not market your wares or qualifications.