The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) wants data analysts Team Pachedu arrested for violating data protection laws and hacking into its website.
This was after Team Pachedu had reported that there were several irregularities and security loopholes in the voters’ roll, NewsDay Zimbabwe reported quoting ZEC spokesperson Commissioner Jasper Mangwana. He is cited as saying:
If someone has the capacity to access information that does not appear on the homepage of the website, what is it?
Is it not hacking? We are not very sure of why they had to dig into information on our website. It is not about being exposed. We are worried about the means they use to obtain the information.
We do not know how they intend to use that information. We do not know the profile of Team Pachedu, who they are, whether they are registered or not for us to engage them. We will not agree to meet a faceless group. To achieve what?
Team Pachedu said the IT loopholes were so gross that they could be identified by “anyone” browsing on the internet. Said Team Pachedu:
There are serious security loopholes in Zec IT systems, which are accessible to anyone browsing on the internet. For instance, the critical folders that run the website ./wp-includes and ./wp-content were left unsecured. We found five people managing the insecure Zec website.
The fact that they call it hacking exposes their weaknesses in IT expertise. There was no hack!
We don’t operate in the shadows. Recently, we invited Zec to a roundtable debate and to tour Zimbabwe showing Zec, along with journalists, the evidence of illegal double voters that we found during our five-month fieldwork audit. Zec refused to meet us face-to-face.
Team Pachedu has been exposing anomalies on the voters’ roll including the alleged movement of 170 000 voters from their constituencies and wards and the creation of additional polling stations under unclear circumstances.
The data analysts say ZEC could be deliberately creating anomalies to manipulate the 2023 elections in favour of the ruling ZANU PF.