Secrets of the BVR (Biometric Voter Registration) system in its entirety were in Spetember exposed by top US university, Harvard. Academics at the institution conducted a detailed research into how the BVR is a “naughty” hub for not only politicians but also criminals. The system while being secretive, can be easily hacked and people’s data altered to ensure for instance that they do not vote; and when a user approaches the commission complaining their details have been tampered with, they will be told the commission cannot do anything about it because of Data Privacy laws. This way many will fail to vote come election day and only “special people” allowed to vote.
The development comes as a report claimed that at present the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission database already has a list over 3 million voters secretly registered.
Civil society organisations have said the ZEC should make its servers accessible to members of the public for accountability purposes. The ZEC Commissioner Qhubani Moyo told the state owned Herald paper, the public will only be invited to inspect the voters’ roll, but access to the database will be restricted.
Moyo said, “Zimbabwe has millions of people and if we open up our servers you can imagine what will happen.
“But the key thing is that storage of data is purely a security matter between ZEC and the person who is registered. The moment you begin to open that data to anyone else other than the party that has registered, you will be, therefore, compromising the whole issue of secrecy of data.
“There is going to be voter inspection, so during voter inspection, the people can then evaluate the information that we would have put into the servers as this is what is going to be placed in the provisional voter’s roll.”
Post published in: Featured