The General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Fiifi Fiavi Kwetey, has indicated that the Electoral Commission’s (EC) inaction regarding the missing laptops and its lack of transparency are unacceptable and concerning.
He noted that the NDC along with Ghanaians demands prompt and comprehensive answers to questions the party had laid to the EC during the previous Inter-Party Advisory Committee (IPAC) meeting about the missing Biometric Verification Devices BVDs and Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) kits.
He noted that the missing Biometric Verification Devices (BVDs) have technical and security implications while he argued that the EC’s general approach to handling the case of the missing devices is not encouraging.
“Over time, some top officials and Commissioners of the EC have made pronouncements that are not only weak and inadequate but also indicative of a troubling lack of understanding of the complexities of electoral security, and their broader implications by the very Commissioners of the EC who are supposed to be knowledgeable and to act very appropriately”.
Fiifi Fiavi Kwetey
Furthermore, Mr. Fiifi Kwetey noted that the EC’s assertion that the missing laptops have no information and therefore the theft poses no impact, apart from the financial loss, is erroneous and an attempt by the EC to justify its inactions and negligence.
He argued that by suggesting that the stolen laptops are inconsequential, the EC shows a worrying level of complacency that reveals that the Commissioners of the EC lack a fundamental understanding of electoral integrity mechanisms and their security implications.
“Their assertions are not only weak and shallow, they are also dangerously misleading and naïve” – Fiifi Kwetey
Mr. Kwetey also argued that the need for an activation code, while a critical layer of security, is not infallible. He therefore noted that the EC’s focus on activation code, as a sole line of defense, illustrates a grave misunderstanding of cyber security principles.
He further demanded from the EC to provide answers on how secure these activation codes are, who manages them, and what protocols are in place to prevent their unauthorized dissemination.
He noted that human error is often the greatest risk in cyber security, stating that it is not uncommon for internal traits of human error to lead to security breaches hence the need to ensure that whoever has access to these activation codes is not compromised.
The Dire Consequences
Moreover, Mr. Fiifi Fiavi Kwetey argued that the fact that the missing laptops have undergone the end-of-life process does not mitigate the risk they pose if they are acquired by malicious actors.
He explained that the missing laptops can serve as a blueprint that can be dissected for hardware vulnerabilities and used in reverse engineering to uncover software flaws and employed in setting up parallel systems to undermine electoral processes.
“How can the EC overlook such basic terms of cyber security? Moreover, these devices even striped of direct electoral data could potentially be used to create counterfeits or to train individuals in manipulating similar devices… Are we to believe that such risks are of no concern to the EC?”
Fiifi Fiavi Kwetey
The NDC General Secretary emphasized that the theft of such laptops must be seen as a direct threat to the integrity and security of Ghana’s Electoral System.
He argued that if the EC has failed to maintain the basic physical security of the missing laptops it cannot be trusted to safeguard the sanctity of Ghana’s electoral process.
Moreover, he advised Ghanaians to demand answers from the EC regarding the missing laptops as the missing devices have the potential to be used in crafting nefarious means to manipulate voter data or to clone data registration processes.
Mr. Kwetey noted that the present situation with the EC is a recipe for electoral disaster that could question the legitimacy of any government or governance process, indicating that the incident casts a dark shadow over the credibility and trustworthiness of the Electoral Commission.
Conclusively, Mr. Kwetey noted that Ghanaians will not trust the December 7th Polls to be free from manipulation when the basic security of the essential pieces of equipment used by the EC in conducting elections cannot be guaranteed.
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