the telegrams are changed without control, the program is not ready and there were whole provinces with faults

The software for the elections This is not over despite the fact that it is missing three weeks for the PASSES, the government does not allow access to audits or vulnerability tests, does not provide source code to opposition parties, simulations were multiple, and images of telegrams sent by schools are changed at this time. count the votes. These are some of the weaknesses of the electoral system that the government presents as agile and transparent and which raises all sorts of doubts about the organization of the next elections.

"I do not know," was the repeated response from Adrián PérezSecretary of Political and Institutional Affairs of the Ministry of the Interior, during the simulation of the elections held yesterday and to which the representatives of the political parties and the press were allowed to enter for the first time. Those "do not have" were before the consultations of The destape related to computer security programs developed by the company Smartmatic and that they will play a central role in the electoral process and in the failures of the simulation, which were not recorded in the government's official communiqué or in its friendly media. The truth is that if Perez, who coordinates the elections, does not know, it's serious. If he knows and does not answer, it's even more serious. Doubts about the management of the elections persist and yesterday it was added that the image that allows to know who carries the votes that arrive in the scanned telegrams is not the same as that scanned in the schools.

Everything revolves around the temporary control, whose badembly line was in the hands of the Smartmatic company, which presented the cheapest offers in both axes of the vote: the transmission of telegrams directly from the schools to the computer center. and the provisional count of these votes. Smartmatic from end to end, as The destape He foresaw what would happen in March. During the consultations with specialists in security and computer engineering, the conclusion is unanimous: in these matters can not "pichulear", the cheapest option is not the safest and you can not go ahead with an unsafe option when it comes to voting. Even less, when everything is done under a veil of opacity in which the government is the only one to have access to the functioning of the system.

This is not an anti-technological look. In fact, as he published The destape In March, the province of Santa Fe worked many years ago to implement a similar system, with one important difference: it has never been outsourced and the collaboration of the University of Santa Fe has National University of Rosario has been asked to work on the project security. The problem with how Mauricio Macri's government solved the problem is that he privatized it in the hands of a suspected company, on the one hand, by his interventions in elections around the world, and on the other hand, does not allow control over the source code and the operation of the software that will be used.

Cambibado

In the rooms where will be counted the preliminary examination votes, the image that will be used by the boys of the data entry It will be different from the one that has left schools under the supervision of prosecutors. These data, unknown until now, were recognized yesterday by a member of Smartmatic and confirmed The destape by the National Elections Directorate.

In the system that the government wants to set up, the telegram that party prosecutors fill out in each polling station is digitized and pbaded from schools to the provisional computer center. Otherwise, enter "contingency" and return to the old system to send it to the nearest branch of the post office, but the parties can not see centrally which schools are in a contingency.

To ensure transparency, the government and Smartmatic state that prosecutors can view the scanned telegram on the computer and verify that it contains the same data as the document.

The information collected yesterday by this media is as follows. The image received by the operators who then upload the votes into the system is not the same as the one leaving the school. Scanners generate a file .tiff but the operator then sees a .png. This file change occurs somewhere in the process that nobody knows.

Added to this is the order of loading telegrams, which once sent are "pending" and the government has not provided information on how to count them. This is the key to announcing the winning trend in prime time.

No codes, no control

"The new data transmission system is not only more agile, but also more transparent," Perez told reporters. As when trying to impose an electronic voting system, macrismo uses speed as an argument, which neither the Constitution nor the Electoral Code requires. Transparency, on the other hand, is not such.

In fact, according to the Smartmatic contract, there is a software confidentiality agreement, which is strange because it has to be examined by those who want it, especially by the opposition parties. The same goes for companies in which Smartmatic has outsourced some of the processes.

The Destape consulted with Perez about the delivery of the source code (which is the DNA of the program) to the political parties, which was to be done 30 days before the PASSES and the expired deadline. "We will obviously deliver the final software, which is probably this version," said Perez, "we are doing the test, everything is going well and we are delivering the software, 30 days before, not because we are changing and modifying it." It has been confirmed that 3 weeks after the elections, the programs that will be used are not ready yet. And there is no room for maneuver to correct the failures that parties may encounter once this information has been repressed so far by the government.

The press tour started at a school in Barracas, where Perez exposed the new system and showed how a telegram is digitized and transmitted. Several computer prosecutors have demonstrated the transmission of a telegram from this school to the computer center. Although it was a few blocks away, the information did not arrive.

Before asking the question of who audited the software of the transmission and the interim review, both of Smartmatic, Perez replied: "We put him to justice and justice will determine." Consulted on who will be in charge of computer security responded that he had security systems for the transmission, questioned about what they are, evaded the issue.

Limited sampling for the press continued at the headquarters of Correo Argentino, where The destape He again asked about computer security, Adrián González, director of Correo Argentino. Instead, responded to a person in charge of computer security, who claimed to be "about 30 computer security specialists who work every day and who is expanded", without however specify how much. The dialogue with this media, which is included in the videos accompanying this note, is continued as follows:

– Who performed the computer security audit ?, asked The destape
– We have a certification company that has certified the whole process, intrusion tests
– Who?
– I do not know if I am allowed to say it for a security problem
– We can not know which company has checked the security of our elections?
– I can not say it
– I then ask the political authority the name of the company that audited the computer security of the elections
– I think Deloitte – Perez answered
– I believe where is it? It's important
– Do you want to know the name of the company? We will keep you informed in a moment.

The short time pbaded and there was no confirmation, although this media could verify the information from other sources. The destape He consulted the proxies of the opposition parties and did not receive the result of the computer audit concerning the programs that will be used during the elections.

Data: Deloitte is a global company with a cybersecurity division that provides these services. Julio Ardita, a well-known former hacker, joined NASA and the Pentagon in the 1990s.

incidents

During the simulation, a screen displays the information provided by Smartmatic on the count and the locations where "incidents" occur, that is, an error reading the telegrams. These incidences are of 3 types: more voters than electors (70%), no coincidence (25%) and unreadable (5%).

However, when viewing information province-by-province, there were in some cases disproportionately high levels of incidence. The oddest case is that of La Rioja, which showed 96% of failures. Other provinces posted high percentages such as San Juan (37%), Santa Cruz (56%), Misiones (56%) or Chacho (22%).

Consulted by this situation, Adrián Perez was dislocated, as he sees in the video that accompanies this note. "I do not know yet. He summoned a head of the National Elections Directorate who explained that it was faults to test the system, as it is recorded in another of the videos that accompany this note. Before the requirement of documentation that proved this statement, they hesitated. Destape, along with other media, waited more than an hour to get an answer. Finally, they delivered some erroneous telegrams from La Rioja. Nothing more.