President Nicolas Maduro in a meeting with the National Defense Council and the State Council in Caracas, Venezuela, on August 12, 2024. Photo: Zurimar Campos/Venezuelan Presidency/AFP.
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, signed a decree for the creation of the National Cybersecurity Council of Venezuela to confront cyber attacks against the country’s technological systems.
During the Defense and State Council that took place this Monday, August 12, with members of the high military command and his cabinet, the head of state said that the measure seeks to guarantee the release and protection of all technological command systems in the country.
“We have to free all command centers, all of them, absolutely, because many people underestimate this situation,” President Maduro said.
For this reason, he considered it necessary that “all the country’s institutions, public and private, must be freed and ‘vaccinated’ against cyber warfare so that the country can function freely and independently.”
He recalled that the cyber attack against the electrical system, recorded on March 8, 2019, and days later, was ordered by the United States, and after this, he said, a great deal of progress was made in the command centers that were controlled remotely from Texas, United States.
Since the presidential elections held last July 28, Venezuela has been subjected to a massive cyberattack, first aiming at the electoral process and later affecting several technological platforms, not only government but also those belonging to the private sector. The infamous Anonymous group has openly admitted that it is carrying out many of the recent and current cyber attacks on social media platforms.
Carter Center
The president said that one of the groups that revealed its true intentions recently was the Carter Center, which “was sent by the United States government to Venezuela as part of the political–electoral coup against the country.”
He pointed out that days after the elections, the aforementioned group “declared from the United States that there was no cyberattack in Venezuela, as if they were cyberattack experts. Because they needed to deny or cover up what was the main attack, which was the cyberattack that had its maximum expression in the attack on the Venezuelan electoral system on July 28 until now.”
“The entire technological platform of the National Electoral Council (CNE) is under attack, which is why the conduct of the deteriorated and destroyed Carter Center, which tried to be used with the prestige it had in the past, and was made to declare in a shameful manner what the State Department and the United States government had ordered, is vulgar,” added President Maduro.
Closing of President Maduro’s TikTok account
President Maduro also repudiated, in the midst of the Security Council, the suspension of access to live broadcasts on his account on the social media platform TikTok until August 19.
“They took me off the air,” said Maduro. Although they are means of entertainment and information, social media platforms have also been used for war, noted the president.
Expert opinion on voting records silenced
The president condemned the fact that the expert opinion on documents collected during the hearings of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) from representatives of political parties and candidates who participated in the presidential elections of July 28 has been silenced worldwide in accordance with the electoral appeal filed before the Venezuelan courts.
“The judicial process carried out by the TSJ, which in its Electoral Chamber has been dedicated to resolving this electoral dispute, is silenced in the world, completely silenced,” President Maduro said. “And our presidential campaign was silenced, while that of fascism was exaggerated, exaggerated. It is all a psychological operation to cover up the truth.”
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US dominates the internet
The Venezuelan president referred again to the dominance that the United States has over the Internet.
“The entire world’s internet is produced in the United States, through technology companies. We are facing a technological empire that no other empire has ever had,” said the president.
President Maduro said that there are mechanisms to defend against this monopoly, and to do so, it is necessary to use tools such as the National Cybersecurity Council of Venezuela that he just created.
(Últimas Noticias) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
