By CIPESA Writer |
The Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum (DRIF) is an annual convening hosted by Nigeria based Paradigm Initiative. Themed “Building a sustainable Internet for all”, this year, the event is being hosted in Nairobi, Kenya on 12-14 April. DRIF is a platform where conversations on digital policy in Africa are shaped, policy directions debated and partnerships forged for…
By CIPESA Writer |
In many Sub-Saharan countries, state surveillance, which generally refers to state measures to monitor and supervise activities of the population, has become more pervasive and reliant on various digital technologies. The increasing communication surveillance, which entails the monitoring, interception, collection and retention of information through communication networks, undermines digital technology users’ rights, including to privacy, and…
By The East African |
What you need to know:
Concerns are growing about who else has access to people’s information, and how they are using it.
Motorists driving across any of the major roads in Uganda, or across the capital Kampala, will not fail to notice the white gantries overhead from which CCTV cameras hang, quietly observing and recording proceedings.
The first…
By Apolo Kakaire |
The Internet which is viewed as the panacea for democracy, participation and inclusion is increasingly becoming a tool of repression deployed by regimes across the world to stifle rights and voice. Africa, a continent already replete with poor democratic credentials and practices seems to be rapidly catching up on the new ‘epidemic’- digital authoritarianism.
The use…
By Tara Davis & Murray Hunter |
Artificial intelligence has moved from the realm of science fiction into our pockets. And while we are nowhere close to engaging with AI as sophisticated as the character Data from Star Trek, the forms of artificial narrow intelligence that we do have inform hundreds of everyday decisions, often as subtle as what products you see when you open…
News Update |
TV report says NSO struck a shady deal with the Ghanaian government, which allegedly planned to use Pegasus to snoop on opposition figures ahead of a 2017 election.
The Ghanaian government purchased NSO’s Pegasus spyware in a shady deal that led to a probe by the West African country’s main intelligence agency, an Israeli investigative TV show revealed Wednesday. Although…
News update |
AFRICAN governments, Zimbabwe included, are using sophisticated surveillance equipment to snoop on citizens and to quash dissenting voices.
This is contained in a report compiled by the International Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa CIPESA — an ICT research watchdog founded in 2004.
The report confirmed that Zimbabwe is using Israel spy technology which exploits loopholes in…
News update |
Earlier this year, an international reporting project based on a list of 50,000 phone numbers suspected of being compromised by the Pegasus spyware program revealed just how widespread digital espionage has become. Pegasus, which is built and managed by the Israeli firm NSO Group, turns mobile phones into surveillance tools by granting an attacker full access to a device’s data. It is among…
Joint Statement |
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global public health emergency that requires a coordinated and large-scale response by governments worldwide. However, States’ efforts to contain the virus must not be used as a cover to usher in a new era of greatly expanded systems of invasive digital surveillance.
We, the undersigned organizations, urge governments to show leadership in tackling the…
By Richard Ngamita |
In August 2018, a video of what appeared to be Ethiopian policemen assaulting a man by the roadside was shared on Twitter. There seems to have been a rapid response from the Addis Ababa Police Department (@Addispolice), leading to the arrest of the culprits due to the virality of the video.
The incident, is one of many which highlights…