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Content type: Examples
Kenya’s Independent Policing Oversight Body reports that it received 87 complaints covering 31 incidents in which injuries were linked to the actions of police officers and 15 deaths between curfew’s imposition on March 27 and June 5. In April, Human Rights Watch accused the police of brutality in imposing the curfew from the beginning, including whipping, kicking, and teargassing people.
Publication: Guardian
Publication date: 2020-06-05
Content type: Video
You can find out more about Haki na Sheria here: http://hakinasheria.org/
Find out more about double registration in Keren's piece "In Kenya, thousands left in limbo without ID cards" in CodaStory: https://www.codastory.com/authoritarian-tech/kenya-biometrics-double-registration/
Find out more about the Huduma Namba case on our website: https://privacyinternational.org/news-analysis/3350/why-huduma-namba-ruling-matters-future-digital-id-and-not-just-kenya
You can listen and…
Content type: Examples
From our partners from the Defenders Coalition: The civil society’s Police Reforms Working Group, comprised of twenty national human rights organisations, condemn the unnecessary and excessive use of force by Kenya Police Service officers yesterday at the Likoni Ferry Crossing, Mombasa. The police actions completely betrayed the specific responsibility bestowed upon them by the President; to facilitate orderly passage of commuters on the Likoni crossing.
Link to their reaction: https://…
Content type: Case Study
The run up to Kenya’s 2017 elections was extremely tense. Kenya has a history of violently fought elections and there was fear this election would be no different. It was in this tense environment, that companies like Cambridge Analytica and Harris Media – and their digital offerings - got involved in the election campaigns.
Cambridge Analytica’s business model is by now familiar, they compiled a huge amount of data points, often through illegal means, to create profiles on individuals –…
Content type: Examples
In order to enforce mandatory 14-day quarantine orders, Kenyan authorities have been tracking mobile phones of people suspected to have COVID-19. Also in Kenya, police enforcement efforts have led to several deaths: three died of injuries from being beaten, one, a 13-year-old boy, was hit by a bullet.
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-52214740
Writer: Dickens Olewe
Publication: BBC News
Content type: Long Read
Background
Kenya’s National Integrated Identity Management Scheme (NIIMS) is a biometric database of the Kenyan population, that will eventually be used to give every person in the country a unique “Huduma Namba” for accessing services. This system has the aim of being the “single point of truth”, a biometric population register of every citizen and resident in the country, that then links to multiple databases across government and, potentially, the private sector.
NIIMS was introduced…
Content type: News & Analysis
On 30 January 2020, Kenya’s High Court handed down its judgment on the validity of the implementation of the National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS), known as the Huduma Namba. Privacy International submitted an expert witness testimony in the case. We await the final text of the judgment, but the summaries presented by the judges in Court outline the key findings of the Court. Whilst there is much there that is disappointing, the Court found that the implementation of NIIMS…
Content type: Advocacy
We welcome the effort by the Government of Kenya to give life to and specify the right to privacy, already enshrined in Article 31(c) and (d) of the Constitution of Kenya by proposing a draft Data Protection Act. We particularly appreciate the direct reference to this Constitutional right in the purpose of the Act and the way it is referred to on several occasions in the Act.
While these efforts have positive intentions and we are pleased that Kenya has adopted a comprehensive data protection…
Content type: Report
In December 2018, the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders-Kenya published a report analysing the needs and concerns of human rights defenders (HRD) in relation to privacy, data protection and communications surveillance.
A summary of their findings is below. Access the full report on their website.
Content type: Advocacy
In parallel to the legislative process initiated by the Kenya Senate in July 2018, a Task Force constituted by the Ministry of Information, Communication and Telecommunication developed a draft Data Protection Bill which it published for consultation in May of this year.
Privacy International and its Kenya Partners, the National Coalition of Human Rights Defenders – Kenya (NCHRD-K), the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology (CIPIT) are pleased to have had the…
Content type: News & Analysis
Photo was found here
This essay was published in The Sur International Journal of Human Rights, Issue 27, July 2018.
Abstract:
This essay focuses on elections in Kenya and analyses the use of technology and the exploitation of personal data in both the electoral process and campaigning. We only need to look to Kenya’s election history to understand why it is important. The 2007/2008 election resulted in violence that killed over 1,000 people and displaced over 600,000. The 2013 election was…
Content type: Advocacy
This photo originally appeared here.
For years, Privacy International and our partners in Kenya have been promoting the right to privacy in Kenya through research and investigations into government and private sector policies and practices and advocating for the adoption and enforcement of the strongest data protection and privacy safeguards.
The need for Kenya to adopt a comprehensive data protection framework (in addition to strengthening privacy protections in other legislation) has always…
Content type: News & Analysis
As the international cyber security debate searches for new direction, little attention is paid to what is going on in Africa. Stepping over the remains of the UN Group of Governmental Experts, and passing by the boardrooms of Microsoft struggling to deliver their Digital Geneva Convention, African nations are following their own individual paths.
Unfortunately, these paths increasingly prioritise intrusive state surveillance and criminalisation of legitimate expression online as…
Content type: Report
The use of biometric technology in political processes, i.e. the use of peoples’ physical and behavioural characteristics to authenticate claimed identity, has swept across the African region, with 75% of African countries adopting one form or other of biometric technology in their electoral processes. Despite high costs, the adoption of biometrics has not restored the public’s trust in the electoral process, as illustrated by post-election violence and legal challenges to the results of…
Content type: Long Read
In December 2017, Privacy International published an investigation into the use of data and microtargeting during the 2017 Kenyan elections. Cambridge Analytica was one of the companies that featured as part of our investigation.
Due to the recent reporting on Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, we have seen renewed interest in this issue and our investigation. Recently in March of 2018, Channel 4 News featured a report on micro targeting during the 2017 Kenyan Presidential Elections, and the…
Content type: Long Read
To mark International Women’s Day 2018, Privacy International and some of our partner organisations - Datos Protegidos, Derechos Digitales, the National Coalition for Human Rights Defenders-Kenya, the Karisma Foundation, and the Foundation for Media Alternatives – are telling the stories of women across the world as told by their data over the next seven days (for us, it’s International Women’s Week!).
Gender inequality has many complex dimensions and data exploitation is yet another.…
Content type: News & Analysis
Written by the National Coalition for Human Rights Defenders - Kenya and Privacy International
05:00: Mercy’s alarm goes off. She gets out of the warmth of the bed into the piercing morning chill. She switches on the bedside lamp and reaches for her Bible. She then checks in onto her devotional group on Facebook, as she does every morning. Her Facebook app keeps track of her location, and the time she wakes up.
05:24: She steps into the shower and prepares for her day in the…