[kictanet] "Talk to Safaricom" Responses to Day 1 Questions

[Mwendwa Kivuva]

On 14 February 2017 at 20:08, Stephen Chege via kictanet
<kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
> Edwin Kiama
>
> My question is on privacy. Rumour has it that GoK through NIS mirrors all
> telecom networks. Are copies of my Smses on the Safaricom Network also
> delivered to the government? Are my calls listened to?
>
>
>
> No. As you correctly pointed out, this is a rumour. We have no visibility of
> call or SMS content nor do we keep copies of the same. Operators act as a
> conduit for transmission of the communication, therefore we only have a log
> for purposes of billing for the service.
>
> Such logs will contain information such as the duration of the call, date
> and time stamp of the message, the sender /recipient numbers and amount
> charged. Under the terms of our licence and laws such as KICA, we are
> required to keep customer information confidential. This standard is raised
> to the higher level by our Constitution, which ensures customers have the
> right to privacy.
>
> We are aware that the Communications Authority has stated that they intend
> to implement a monitoring system whose objectives include getting access to
> customer information. I wish to point out that this request has only been
> made in recent weeks by the CA to the operators.
>

Thanks you Steve for bringing this up. Under which law will CA be
implementing a monitoring system on Operators' platforms? As far as my
little legal knowledge stretches, any intent to access citizen's
private data can only be accompanied by a court order (court of
competent jurisdiction they say), and the access cannot be in
perpetuity. It can only be for a specific finite task, mostly
investigation. I hope CA can also respond to this.

Walu and Grace can follow up with questions that spin out to other actors.

> All operators (and here I believe I speak for the industry, but I stand to
> be corrected) are not in favour of any third-party system that would have
> access to confidential customer information.  We have registered our strong
> reservations with the CA and discussions on this matter are ongoing.
>

Pleas keep the community informed on the outcome.

> I think this is a matter that this forum should take a keen interest in and
> one that should be subjected to robust discussion as it touches directly on
> issues of data privacy, confidentiality and access to private information
> before operators are forced to implement the system.

Thanks for that assurance Steve.This is one of the issues this forum
feels strongly about. Rest assured any measures outside the law will
be met with equal and opposite force. I'm glad the courts have been
very instrumental in clawing back constitutional safeguards the
executive have tried to deny the people.


Regards
______________________
Mwendwa Kivuva, Nairobi, Kenya
twitter.com/lordmwesh