Nairobi, Kenya, April 8 – The Kenya Human Rights Commission has warned that the move by government compelling Kenyans to register their Sim Cards threatens the privacy rights of citizens.
The KHRC said Friday in a statement that the step taken by the Communications Authority of Kenya which would see Kenyans submit to have their photographs taken and retained is unlawful and promotes intrusive data harvesting.
“The government continues to wield pervasive power to invasively collect our personal data whereas we’ve witnessed previous data breaches that led to irregular sharing of our personal data with third parties e.g many Kenyans have been irregularly registered into political parties,” KHRC said.
The lobby pointed out that a majority of Kenyans registered their SIM cards at the point of purchase adding that they are now being forced to submit new personal data or risk de-registration and hefty fines.
They pointed out that the state has not yet put in place adequate measures to safeguard data protection of Kenyans.
“Without data protection safeguards in place, Kenyans are worried that their faces and personal data risk being shared with third parties,” it added.
The lobby stated the government need to put in place secure systems that guarantee the protection of citizens’ privacy rights.
CA has warned that mobile phone subscribers who fail to register their details with their respective telecommunication service providers by April 15 will face disconnection.
Director General Ezra Chiloba stated that the move is to enforce the SIM card registration regulations of 2015 and is aimed at combating cybercrime and fraud in the digital space.
Chiloba said the Communication Authority will not extend the ongoing SIM card registration deadline and urged unregistered mobile subscribers to do so in the remaining days.
He asked all mobile network operators to speed up the data cleanup exercise and said that no more time will be added upon the expiry of the grace period noting that unregistered sim cards have security implications.
