Elections dirty tricks as politicians hire hackers
Politicians are reportedly hiring hackers to have damning reports including proceedings of corruption cases erased from online platforms.
Administrators of webpages that have negative profiles of personalities either eyeing elective posts or government jobs in new administrations expected in county and national level after elections have been warned to be vigilant about the criminal project to eliminate the digital footprint of the damning content.
With integrity scrutiny for key government jobs inclusive of online sourced memorandums during interview sessions, as well as muck racking by rivals in election campaigns expected to intensify, so is the racket to compromise negative online publications.
So high are the stakes that some of the personalities are reported to be paying bribes between Sh200, 000 and Sh2 million to have just one report deleted.
A politician in Murang’a County has since been placed on the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) radar on suspicions of making contacts to help him delete corruption reports about him on several websites.
Male politician
“We got wind that the male politician has been recruiting people to hack into websites of several media houses, those of bloggers and DCI. His intention is to have his profiled corruption cases in court deleted from the websites,” Gatanga DCI boss John Kanda told Nation.
Mr Kanda said if there is evidence of hacking systems, DCI will act as that is cybercrime. A certificate of good conduct from the DCI and clearance by the Ethics and Anti-corruption Commission (EACC) are among the requirements for aspirants and those seeking public appointments.
However, he said the DCI has no role given in most instances the administrators of those sites are being compromised and voluntarily pull down the offending posts.
“In most cases, these people are approaching the authorised administrators of the websites as well as blog owners where they pay to have the information blacked out. Under such circumstances where the publisher is the one who has been compromised to pull down the information, there is very little we can do. But should we get evidence that the disappearance of the information is through hacking the systems hence unauthorised access, certainly we will go after the culprits,” Mr Kanda said.
Negative reports
James Mwangi, who is a communications consultant based in Thika Town, said he has been approached by several politicians seeking to know whether it’s possible to have their negative reports disappear from several websites.
“Knowing too well that the best way to have the information disappear is for them to engage the website administrators, I have been referring them to the hosts. I know of a politician in Central region who has succeeded in having his profiles pulled down on some websites. He spent Sh3.5 million,” Mr Mwangi claimed.
Mr Mwangi said bloggers are now having a field day pulling down negative reports touching on personalities with an interest in next year’s General Election. “Those others positioning themselves to contest County Executive jobs and other public service placements after the polls are also on the lookout for any negative report made online and where present, spending colossal amounts to have it deleted,” he said.
Murang’a based advocate of the High Court Mr Timothy Kariuki told Nation that some 2022 poll hopefuls as well as others eyeing public jobs in the new regimes are flocking his office seeking advice on how to cleanse themselves online.
“Most sought advice is on how to remove negative footprints on the web and how to cleanse them from the judiciary so as to qualify for award of certificate of good conduct certificates. And the advice is very simple—approach the publishers of the websites and negotiate, if the articles are defamatory, we can sue and pray for orders to have them pulled down and if one was prosecuted and was acquitted or served a sentence, then we can apply for his/her fingerprints to be expunged from judiciary registries,” Mr Kariuki explained.
Dishing out cash
But a seasoned politician in Mt Kenya region who has served for 15 years told Nation that “those people are just taking a very long route to cleanse themselves. What works is money delivered to the authorising authorities.” He claims cash delivered discreetly to relevant authorities “clears all those criminal, corruption, academic and any other barrier” to clearance to vie.
“It is only a naïve person who is a stranger to how Kenya works who will start dishing out cash to web hosts, bloggers and what else in the name of a strategy,” he said. According to Dan Kirima of the NewTimes Generation Webmasters, removing such material from online files is a tricky venture.
"The question is the legality of the drive. It is a criminal enterprise where one is being recruited to scheme destruction of online footprints. It can only be done illegally if the host who had uploaded it is not the one to do it above board," he said.
He said that there are four ways to remove content from search engines-ask hackers to do it, negotiate with the publisher, petition the Google search engine administrators or go to court to seek orders to have the damning content deleted. BY DAILY NATION

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