It is mandatory for this blog to address the issue of the decree creating the National Cybersecurity Council, a legal framework specially created a few days after one of the largest cybernetic electoral frauds in the history of the American continent, and perhaps of the world, took place in the Venezuelan Electoral Power.
Although the regime of Nicolás Maduro Moros, and even some part of the opposition, insist on the existence of a “hacking” of the Venezuelan automated system for counting votes, the “best electoral system in the world” according to its creators, no one has demonstrated up to this moment with sufficiently verifiable technical evidence, the existence of such “hacking”, beyond expressing that “since we did not win” the elections, “they hacked” the system. And until that does not happen, it is not possible to believe in such version of the regime, which by reacting in this way denies the truth of what happened on July 28.
In the opinion of Dr. Jennie Lincoln, senior advisor of the Carter Center for Latin America and head of the only independent electoral observation mission in the Venezuelan elections, there was no “hacking” on July 28: “There is no proof or evidence, much less, there is evidence to the contrary. There are companies in the region that monitor the denial of service to Internet systems in the region. There was no report, no denial of service in Venezuela on this night. Second, the people inside the transmission room, there were people from the CNE, there were witnesses in the transmission room, monitoring the transmission rhythm tonight and they confirm, they confirm that at midnight they had received 92% of the votes by transmission without fail. There was a moment when the rhythm was slower than the other, but it did not stop, it did not stop. This is proof that there was no 'hacking'...” (see in Spanish Confidencial, Jennie Lincoln: no evidence of alleged hacking in Venezuela, in https://youtu.be/soaQUkfUVvc?t=388) (emphasis added).
In other words, there is no choice but to conclude that the CNE, having received at midnight almost all the Acts of the process, 92% according to the Carter Center, suspended the transmissions or did not admit the existence of such fact, claiming that the opposition had “hacked” the automated system, something that in the entire history of that system, was impossible to do according to its own propaganda.
But even so, and based on a narrative created to sustain himself in power without the votes to back it up, Nicolás Maduro Moros decrees a National Council of Cybersecurity as part of it, insisting on a non-existent -or at least unproven- “hacking”, but which brings with it very serious collateral elements, but extremely useful to entrench itself in the persecution of citizens and the violation of freedom of expression, to silence a very uncomfortable truth through social networks, which shouts to the world every second that the king does not have the votes to remain in power, repressing citizens for that reason. Let's see why.
A National Cybersecurity Council is created “as an advisory and consulting body under the President of the Republic...” (Article 1 of the decree), not as a body of the administration, capable of exercising any action on citizens. However, further on we see that this Council can “Request from natural or legal persons of public and private nature the data, statistics and information related to the informatics security of the Nation, as well as their necessary support” (Article 2, numeral 8), in clear contradiction with what is established in the 1999 Constitution (see Decree creating the National Cybersecurity Council, in https://www.bancaynegocios.com/decreto-consejo-nacional-de-ciberseguridad-creara-red-de-vigilancia-permanente-de-incidentes-telematicos/).
Who defines the “informatics security of the Nation”? What is that? What criteria do they apply to define it? Whoever says whoever is in that Cybersecurity Council? Based on that pseudo concept ANYTHING FITS WITHIN THAT DEFINITION. Anything you have on your computer, from a recipe for chicken soup, to the year-end report of any small business, to the formula for landing a man on the moon, falls within that definition of “informatics security”, if that is what the Council decides.
Since there is no regulation in the country that protects, according to international standards, the data of Venezuelan citizens, our only protection is found in the constitutional text of 1999. Venezuelans have the constitutional right to protect our privacy and to be jealous owners of all the data collected and/or possessed by the government, but also by any public or private entity in the country. And no sub-legal norm, such as a presidential decree, is above that protection. And that protection is granted by Articles 28, 48 and 60 of the 1999 Constitution. However, few know that these rights are a matter of international priority by virtue of the vertiginous acceleration of the technological phenomenon and its ever increasing globalization.
I will spare you the trouble of searching the Constitution:
Article 28: Every person has the right to access information and data about himself or herself or his or her property contained in official or private records, with the exceptions established by law, as well as to know the use made of them and their purpose, and to request before the competent court the updating, rectification or destruction of those, if they are erroneous or illegitimately affect his or her rights. Likewise, he/she may access documents of any nature containing information whose knowledge is of interest to communities or groups of people. The secrecy of the sources of journalistic information and of other professions determined by law shall be protected.
Article 48: The secrecy and inviolability of private communications in all their forms is guaranteed. They may not be interfered with except by order of a competent court, in compliance with legal provisions, and the secrecy of private matters unrelated to the corresponding process shall be preserved.
Article 60: Every person has the right to the protection of his honor, private life, intimacy, self-image, confidentiality and reputation. The law shall limit the use of informatics to guarantee the honor and personal and family privacy of citizens and the full exercise of their rights. (CRBV, Articles 28, 48 and 60) (emphasis added).
In other words, it follows from these articles that you are the SOLE owner of your personal data and have the right to protect it. This is guaranteed all over the world. And furthermore, the Administration of any State, i.e. your government, which keeps your data for multiple reasons, or any private party, such as your bank or other entity that requires it, cannot use it without your consent, and you have the right to order the destruction of the data they have in their possession, if you think it will harm you. That is what our Constitution says and it is a human right that is protected in all civilized countries of the world, and it has a name: the right to Informational Self-Determination.
On December 15, 1983 the German Constitutional Court declared the 1982 Census Act unconstitutional, ruling as follows, which subsequently became law throughout the European Union: “The general right of personality... encompasses... the individual's right, derived from self-determination, to decide basically for himself when and within what limits it is appropriate to disclose situations concerning his own life. ...: the free emergence of the personality presupposes in modern conditions of data processing the protection of the individual against the unrestricted collection, storage, use and transmission of data concerning the person”. Thus was born the international right to “Informational Self-Determination” (see in Spanish Judgment of December 15, 1983. Census Law. Right to Personality and Human Dignity, in https://www.informatica-juridica.com/sentencia/sentencia-de-15-de-diciembre-1983-ley-del-censo-derecho-la-personalidad-y-dignidad-humana/).
How then can any government, or regime in this case, without a judicial process, and through an “advisory” body created by a sub-legal regulation “require from natural or legal persons of public and private nature the data, statistics and information” that concern them? It simply cannot.
Violating the human right to informational self-determination opens the Pandora's Box of electronic surveillance on citizens. Since the imposition of China's Internet Wall (see in Spanish The Great Wall of China's Internet, in https://expansion.mx/tecnologia/2023/08/31/gran-cortafuegos-de-china-como-es-el-internet) to high-tech surveillance systems to repress the population, as China is doing in Xinjiang, according to a Human Rights Watch report (see in Spanish China: How Mass Surveillance Works in Xinjiang, in https://www.hrw.org/es/news/2019/05/01/china-como-funciona-la-vigilancia-masiva-en-xinjiang).
If that is what the regime intends with this new phase of “cybersecurity”, they will lose again, as they lost on July 28. They will also face the determined civil and peaceful resistance -and resilience- of the Venezuelan people, which resulted in the desperate narrative of the “hacking” of the CNE. In view of this new authoritarian drift of the regime, manifested this time in Maduro's new cybersecurity, we can only invoke and vindicate once again the lapidary phrase of a 19th century Venezuelan president, Antonio Guzmán Blanco: “Venezuela is like a dried leather, you step on it on one side and it rises on the other”. I believe that after June 28 we must understand and apply this historical phrase more than ever, and act accordingly for what is coming. We will need it very much from now on, with a regime that apparently still believes that in Venezuela the dry leather stays still when it is stepped on...
Caracas, August 23, 2024
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
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