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| The CCK Centre in Nairobi |
The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) this week brazenly, flagrantly and shamelessly announced it's intention to forcibly install spyware (no one has shown ecstatic enthusiasm with such nefarious meddling) on all the the Internet Service Providers and telecoms in Kenya to ostensibly act as a Network Early Warning System (NEWS). The 'NEWS' ladies and gentleman is that Kenya would be thrown back to the good old days of totalitarian censorship and at best into a modern regimen of complete and routine violation of the constitutionally entrenched protection of individual privacy and freedoms.
This program as is well known is not a CCK originated idea. Steamy eroticism with the so called 'National Security' and how this amorphous 'thing' necessarily, nay, urgently -- needs to penetrate and violate personal liberties in this country has been the morbid fascination of the NSIS (National Security Intelligence Service). The people at the NSIS have been frantically trying to do all sorts of things that would allow them to do things that are explicity forbidden by the new constitution without the authorization of courts through individual writs. Things such as wire-tapping, censorship, control of information flow and electronic surveillance. The big bad boys of intelligence know their needs and they have tried all sorts of gimmickry to unlawfully give themselves the necessary powers 'lawfully'.
For instance before the constitutional referendum in 2010 they illegally inserted a clause into the draft constitution before it's mass printing that would have allowed personal rights with regard to privacy and liberty to be abrogated whenever the NSIS thought it had reason to meddle. That without the need for court orders, or any supervision or legal oversight whatsoever.
They could get whatever they wanted, by whatever means and from whoever they wanted at any time without notice or notification. The resulting outcry with such an outrageous and illegally inserted clause thwarted that ploy and all the copies having that clause were recalled and new fresh copies had to be printed -- a costly enterprise for the government that had gained nothing for the NSIS. Nobody was held accountable other than the clueless government printer and even he was not fired.
Ever since the NSIS hand and name has been popping up in all sorts of intelligence related issues, particularly with the ongoing legislation of laws to comply with the dictates of the new constitution. The NSIS is a spoilt baby frantically trying to claw back some of the powers it was deprived during it's transformation from the underground political mob crew known as Special Branch to it's current status as a toothless academic entity that Kenyans philosophically refer to from time to time.
So there is no doubt whose interests the CCK is fronting. There is also no doubt that the CCK is knowingly or unknowingly lying that they will be only intercepting, and reading e-mail -- an outrageous violation by itself. (Giving the NSIS/CCK the powers to read all e-mails at their discretion is like giving the police the means and right to enter into every bedroom, toilet and bathroom across the country at any time and then to have them watch, stay at their own pleasure and even more alarmingly participate in all that drama in whatever way they wished!).
Once the spyware (hardware and software) is installed at all the ISPs there is nothing that would prevent or deter the CCK (apart from those very same pandering ISPs) from doing far much more than just reading e-mail. The goal must be remembered is electronic surveillance in order to thwart, prosecute, confuse, obfuscate, steal identities, impersonate and to eliminate the threat from 'chosen' targets -- which could be you. But for the sake of argument let us look at what unfettered access to only people's and other entities' e-mails would mean.
At first glance monitoring and reading e-mail (which is what CCK is earnestly stating are it's innocuous intentions) both incoming and outgoing, does not seem to be anything more than another mild and remotely pesky form of privacy invasion. No more so than a peeping Tom who occasionally peers at your backyard to look at your chicken and drying underwear.
This is the misplaced notion that I will be kindly knocking out of your head -- should you be afflicted by such illustrious silliness or ignorance. Who knows, perhaps you might have the power to actually do something about it other than merely ranting on a blog like Greyhorn.
If it had escaped your attention, first and foremost, please do note that an e-mail account is not just an e-mail account. It is NO LONGER merely a place or pouch where you receive notices, notifications, memos, circulars, death threats, spam and scam, whacky love notes and such like.
Let me demonstrate with Google (the equally untrustworthy techies who are hosting this blog for free). A few years ago when you opened a Gmail account, what you had was simply an address with lots of space for receiving and sending e-mail. It was boringly effective and sufficient. As time went on companies like Google started to offer other free online services and products other than e-mail services only.
You could post copies of your documents in electronic form (Title deeds, certificates, resumes, receipts, contracts, etc) with Google documents for ease of access of copies from any location. You could post all your digitized photos into your web album into an account via Google's Picasa. You could post videos and other clips on Google's YouTube. Like me you could have a blog like this hosted by Google. Through your Gmail account you can chat and sms your friends and family -- which gives Google their mobile numbers, country and names besides being able to better map your social contacts and associations.
All your favourite locations in the world, including the exact co-ordinate locations of your grandmother's rural home, your own home, your office, your important clients, your friends etc would be stored on your account with Google Earth. In short through it's various services Google has all the information about you, sometimes not even because you put it there but through your friends and family.
In the past all this colossal amount of personal information was hosted by Google separately, but now it has changed policy and all your information is being consolidated into related accounts -- i.e. your relevant Gmail account. By merely signing into your e-mail account somebody can access all the above information about you by hopping from one service or product to the other. Not to mention all the e-mails that are archived in your account.
So on an individual basis it would make sense for the info hungry NSIS to want to have unbridled access to everybody's e-mail account especially now that everything is being so prettily lumped together by the likes of Google for their creepy data mining needs. The CCK though is claiming that it would only 'read' your e-mails as they are being sent and received. But they can also 'read' all unencrypted data, including passwords to any of your accounts, e-mail or otherwise and all other unencrypted communication. Access is access and obviously a culture of privacy violation can only lead to other more invasive forms of violations besides those stated.
That is on a personal or individual level.
In terms of business the ramifications are even more galling. Let us say you have authorized your bank to communicate to you or accept instructions via e-mail, then sensitive unencrypted information such as PINs, passwords and other critical transaction information can, if CCK's plan goes ahead, be accessed without your knowldge or consent!! Worse still by person's whom you do not know and cannot be held accountable for the privacy violation even if you somehow managed to detect it!
It must be remembered these are not lowly thieves or fraudsters, these are powerful government agents with enormous human and intelligence resources at their disposal. The amount of damage outside their security functions that they can inflict (either for financial gain by rogue elements within the NSIS and CCK or at the behest and pay of third parties) is far much more considerable and immensely leveraged by their command of the state apparatus.
Sensitive intra-organisation circulars and memos especially at large companies that are communicated via the open Internet will be under greater threat of compromise. Those companies not already using encrypting services for their mail servers will now as a necessity have to do so. Nothing can be taken for granted anymore, that is how toxic the CCK would have made Internet communication.
The biggest threat in this new move is not that in itself it would be the cause of the greatest damage, but that the collapse in confidence for Internet privacy in Kenya would be far much more destructive. With this move I can confidently state we can forget about the dream of an African Silicon Valley in Kenya.
Intellectual innovation cannot thrive in a sphere of inherent distrust, fear, physical and psychological impediments that the government, the NSIS and CCK are busy putting up. We might as well hang up the gloves on succesful commercialization of online businesses as well -- why would you enter into online contracts or transactions yet you do not know what the hell is going on on the other side at any given time?
NSIS idiots could be fiddling with your orders and what-not in their information gathering frenzy either by interfering on the firm or client side. You can strike the word reliability, privacy and integrity from the lexicon of words that would describe the Internet phenomenon in Kenya at that point. Devolved Jambonetting and retarded inefficiency is what we would be back to.
In essence this CCK move is the biggest job killer and economy shrinking move that has ever been envisaged by any entity in Kenya. It urgently needs to be resoundingly thwarted and put into the graveyard of other NSIS inspired retrograde ideas.
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Mutula Kilonzo and the Woes of a Miser
The Greyhorn has one of his weird theories as to why there has been cold airs between the VP Kalonzo Musyoka and the minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Mutula Kilonzo. Here it goes:
Mutula Kilonzo, lawyer to the former president/ other rich vile characters/ conveyancing mogul has refused to put some of his colossal wealth that is rumoured to be stashed all over the world at the disposal of the Wiper Party.
Although the Greyhorn has not familiarized himself with the actual contents of the Political Parties Act, he has read there are provisions for declaration of sources of funds for political parties. This automatically aveils a wonderful and simple pretext (should Mutula need one) to summarily reject advances to have his personal wealth in being used to wipe Kalonzo's bum into power.
Such Mutulanite obstinence in the face of the greater Kamba 'cause' might not have been well taken by the Kamba hordes around Kalonzo; hordes of goons with the proclivity for retrogressive thinking. Hence the cause of the low level intrigues and bristling anger against the wily and master at law one Mr. Mutula Kilonzo.
What is funny is that no matter how angry they are with Mutula, they are pretty circumspect with regards to going for Mutula's jugular. No matter how vulnerable he may seem politically, the Justice Minister is a character that is just best handled with utmost caution. He is like a porcupine with hundreds of lethal and immensely poisonous spines -- dangerous arsenals that he is more likely to discharge when cornered and under relentless duress. When I grow up I want to be Mutula Kilonzo . . . so that I can piss everybody off and nobody can do anything about it!
M. Wycliff,
Nairobi.
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