Safaricom Security Imbroglio: How Private is our Privacy?
Atunga Atuti O.J
A year ago, Edward Snowden an employee of the US spy agency lifted
the lid on an elaborate surveillance and snooping activities on her
citizens and foreigners including foreign heads of state and government.
This was on account of national security. The question then was why the
US would consider foreign sovereigns including her allies a US national
security threat to warrant the actions that the government under the
National Security Agency (NSA) was involved in. A week back, Vodafone,
one of the largest telecommunication companies released a report
detailing how governments in the territories it operates pressure
telecos to engage in mobile phone communications monitoring. The report
details the grounds on which security agencies routinely listen into,
intercept data or demand for access for communications details regarding
customers on their networks ostensibly on account of national security
concerns.
In the recent past Safaricom, a local subsidiary of Vodafone has
been in the news regarding a security contract whereby the Private
Communications company is supposed to develop and deliver a surveillance
infrastructure for one of the security agencies in Kenya. From a
business perspective, there is no problem concerning a for-profit
company undertaking such a service for a security agency anywhere in the
world. In fact most governments especially in the developing countries
turn to private companies for such a service. But Safaricom is no
ordinary company in Kenya. It is a brand that has built its reputation
on secure delivery of data and voice communication.
It is not lost on Kenyans that the same company was contracted in
the transmission of Elections results through a system which collapsed
on the weight of results from a few hundred constituencies heightening
tensions and accusations of compromise on the part of a section of
Kenyan voters.
The Security contract and the report by Vodafone on routine
interference by security agencies in most of the countries( these were not named on account of security of her employees as well as those of her local subsidiaries) it operates
pose a number of security, privacy and human rights issues. First is the
right to privacy. The report by Vodafone clearly and boldly states that
in most of the countries it operates, governments authorities require
‘direct access to an operator's network — bypassing legal niceties like
warrants and eliminating the need to get case-by-case cooperation from
phone-company employees’. Even though it did not name the countries,
this is a very worrying trend because it completely circumvents one of
the cardinal provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and
Constitutions of various countries including Kenya. The right to
privacy, in essence the ‘element of various legal traditions which may restrain both government and private party action that threatens the privacy of individuals’. Article 31 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 is explicit on this matter and provides thus that .Art 31. [Every person has the right to privacy, which includes the right — not to have— (a) their person, home or property searched;(b) their possessions seized;(c) information relating to their family or private affairs unnecessarily required or revealed; or (d)
the privacy of their communications infringed].
Safaricom is a private
company that has operated and experienced exponential growth on account
of the perception that the information that the customers entrust it
with is secure and safe from interference. This perception has to a
great extent been dented by the Vodafone report. The second issue is
the credibility gap-arising partly from the failure in the transmission of the March 2013
electoral results - and specifically, the extent
Safaricom which delivers our communications( data voice and other
formats) should be engaged by a party that seeks to engage in the
surveillance of some of her customers whose information and details the
company is already entrusted with by the customers. And finally there
are questions as whether Safaricom would end up through acts of omission
and commission misusing the information it already has about her client
to the advantage of or in the service of her client-the Kenya Police
Service.
As it is, there is already a burgeoning global backlash against
violations of the rights to privacy around the world ignited by the
Edward Snowden revelations regarding the NSA, the UK wire-tapping of
private conversations including those of the Royal Household, the
interception of communications between German Chancellor, Angela Markel and her colleagues
and foreign sovereigns. The fundamental questions regarding these
developments include the following; first, what is the boundary between
the privacy of individuals and the legitimate desire by government
security agencies to collect information to enhance the security of her
citizenry? Second and more pertinent is the extent to which private
citizens like Safaricom and the mother company Vodafone should be
complicity in such violations.
While we await the decision of the Kenyan Parliamentary Inquiry into the
award of the tender for surveillance to Safaricom, we should initiate debate on the above issues
because they have not emerged in the deliberations regarding the
contracting of Safaricom – a private company that has legitimate
possessions of our information and provides a legitimate infrastructure
for communications should engage in activities that seek to spy on her
customers. Can Safaricom and other operators in Kenya and around the world assure their customers in
light of the recent revelations in the Vodafone report, that they are
not facilitating mass surveillance by giving spies unrestricted access
to their networks.
* a version of this opinion was published by the People on Saturday June 14th 2014
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Atunga Atuti O.J. is a human rights scholar at the Centre for Human Rights and Peace , University of Nairobi andChief Executive Officer,East Afr. School of Human Rights
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