[kictanet] Poor show by IEBC: Data Protection in year 2017 and the case of raw voter registration data

Mon Jul 3 08:51:43 EAT 2017

@ Githaiga, I concur with you on the Techies. They are a great resource in many areas we are "short in" and especially here in the Counties as we move to phase 2.0 of devolution - so please rudi nyumbani before we make a bad situation worsened.
I also do not buy into the notion that the Government people are "rookie" - I suspect they went to the same schools and professional bodies (and if not, back to point no 1).
Inasmuch as here I am yet to understand why @ Kivuva is on fire, I appreciate what he is trying to say which is NOT an issue specific to IEBC, haya ni mazoea and not an IEBC issue. The blame aka responsibility lies right here with the internet community that should have been (and be) the public eye.As a government agency, it is not only IEBC that has this open unlimited public access information .
Befriend an Airtel, Orange, Equitel, MPESA or other agent today, ask to photocopy their manual booklet - perhaps try. Even as you transact to sign off, you can take a good picture of the pages they use with consent of not, from how they handle the booklets.
Children should not be screened without parental approval. We have this in mainstream media, even kids taken court which is a NO NO??
All in all, it might be a good place to start on this while speaking to the right body. I suspect this goes back to the Ministry of Information - the Acts and Statutes that should govern and how adherence is ensured.
I am not sure privacy has a definition any more in respect to where we have allowed ourselves to go. But there is always room for recovery.
Be blessed.
Regards/Wangari ---
Pray God Bless. 2013Wangari circa - "Being of the Light, We are Restored Through Faith in Mind, Body and Spirit; We Manifest The Kingdom of God on Earth".

    On Friday, 30 June 2017, 2:08, Grace Githaiga via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

 #yiv9511989605 body, #yiv9511989605 p, #yiv9511989605 td, #yiv9511989605 div, #yiv9511989605 span{font-size:13px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;}#yiv9511989605 #yiv9511989605 body p{margin:0px;}@Chebukati

I like the idea of a legitimate implementable solution. And I believe we have many of those here--on this list. So Listers, take up Chebukati's challenge and suggest what is pragmatic and would probably help the techies at IEBC  move this process forward with less glitches. 

Best regards

Githaiga, Grace

On Friday, 30-06-2017 at 01:29 Emmanuel Chebukati via kictanet wrote:

Greetings,
Thinking out loud here: what are the alternatives to an open system? In my view: Limiting requests per IP address would obviously lock out many users. Implementing cookies et al to limit to one query per day would also lock out several legitimate users (e.g. those who share PCs at cybers). Introducing a username/password combo made out of perhaps the birth-date would complicate matters for the average voter.
I think the only legitimate options they have to prevent abuse/mass mining of this information is to implement a service like Cloudflare on the subdomain. This would at least stop a repetitive CURL request in its tracks or at least severely slow it down. Nevertheless, a quick IP ping shows that it appears as though the subdomain voterstatus.iebc.or.ke is running on Google Cloud servers which offer similar services as Cloudflare these days. I trust the good people at IEBC have explored these services.
Let's brainstorm. Perhaps a legitimate, implementable solution may arise from this discussion that works for the "Kenyan context".

Regards,
EC
On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 11:55 PM, Ronald Ojino via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

This is a very serious anomaly that must be addressed soonest possible. It begs the question, are we safe as data subjects? If a body like IEBC that is expected to be beyond reproach can have such open flaws...then we say that we are ready to go for elections huh?its a disappointment.
On 29-Jun-2017 11:47 PM, "Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet" <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke > wrote:

Dear Listers,
Today I'm wearing my CISA hat.
IEBC has launched a voter verification tool both through sms, and web query at http://voterstatus.iebc.or. ke/voter
If you are privacy conscious, and a little bit paranoid, you will realize that IEBC is doing badly with how they are exposing  raw data of nearly 20 million Kenyans to the world. Anybody with basic programing skills can be able to harvest the raw data through an automated search. If you search any random number with the format of Kenya ID numbers, say hypothetically 12345678, you will realize you can pull up citizen's details, at least ID number, and name, and where they live.
Basic security tips would require the system to have a captcha to prevent automated harvest of the information, and also have a challenge questions like date of birth to supplement the ID number, therefore thwart any mischievous individuals from harvesting the rich data

Can IEBC correct the anomaly?
Attached is a sample demo screenshot. Of course there is the other thing of strange ID numbers finding their way into the voter register.

Voter Details for Id: 12345678

| Id / Passport Number | 12345678 |
| Primary Name | KIBET |
| Secondary Name | KIRUI |
| Birth Date | 01/01/1994 |
| Gender | M |
| Polling Station Code | 101 |
| Polling Station | LELACH PRIMARY SCHOOL |
| County | KERICHO |
| Contituency | BURETI |
| Ward | CHEPLANGET
 |

______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
twitter.com/lordmwesh

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