Illegal state surveillance in Africa ‘carried out with impunity’
Governments in Africa are conducting unlawful digital surveillance of their residents with impunity, regardless of privateness rights being nicely protected on paper, in keeping with a comparative analysis of surveillance legal guidelines and practices in six African international locations.
The evaluation, performed by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the African Digital Rights Network (ADRN), pulls collectively six separate analysis reviews taking a look at how the governments of Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Sudan are utilizing and investing in new digital applied sciences to hold out unlawful surveillance on residents.
These applied sciences embody synthetic intelligence (AI)-based web and cellular surveillance, cellular spy ware, biometric digital ID programs, CCTV with facial recognition, and car licence plate recognition.
While the general evaluation famous that residents’ proper to privateness and personal communication is enshrined in every nation’s structure – in addition to worldwide human rights conventions and their very own home legal guidelines – it claimed that every authorities is purposely utilizing legal guidelines that lack readability, or ignoring legal guidelines altogether, in order to hold out unlawful digital surveillance on journalists, activists, opposition leaders, judges, and others.
The report mentioned the erosion of residents’ privateness rights is right down to a spread of things, together with: the introduction of latest legal guidelines that develop state surveillance powers; an elevated provide of latest surveillance applied sciences that allow the practices; and impunity for any state agent caught conducting unlawful surveillance.
“No prosecutions were recorded in any country for those state employees conducting illegitimate surveillance of citizens,” mentioned the report. “Civil society activists are alarmed about evidence of surveillance creep, the normalisation of illicit surveillance and what they fear is a slow descent into digital authoritarianism.”
It added that though state surveillance is nothing new, it has expanded massively in the digital age.
“Colonial powers used surveillance to enable extraction of taxes and to monitor the struggle for independence,” mentioned the report. “In recent years, analogue surveillance has been digitised and automated, making mass surveillance possible. This has happened against a backdrop of 15 consecutive years of reductions in democratic freedoms worldwide and shrinking civic space globally.”
Speaking to Computer Weekly, the report’s editor and digital analysis fellow at IDS, Tony Roberts, mentioned there are clear hyperlinks between the surveillance carried out below formal colonialism and the surveillance being carried out now. “Under colonial rule, UK Special Branch spied on its political opponents,” he mentioned. “When these opponents of colonial rule got here to energy after independence, a few of them retained particular branches and developed their very own surveillance programs.
“Over time, new technologies of surveillance have been incorporated. They are supplied by the UK, France and other countries in the global north. The UK continued to use signal intercept [techniques] to conduct surveillance on former colonies post-independence. The continuities are clear.”
Strong civil society wanted to problem abuses
The report additionally cited the inadequate capability of civil society to carry the state totally accountable to its personal legal guidelines as one other main issue contributing to the erosion of privateness rights.
“The violation of human rights occurs in many countries, but the threat is arguably greatest in fragile democracies – those with weak legal and regulatory oversight, poor institutional protections and where levels of awareness about privacy rights and surveillance practices are lowest,” it mentioned, including that though surveillance legal guidelines may be improved by offering mechanisms for notification, transparency, oversight and authorized punishments, these modifications shall be inadequate with out a robust civil society to problem abuses.
“Unless the state adheres to the law, it has limited relevance,” mentioned the report. “Our country reports suggest that holding governments accountable in law depends on a strong and active civil society. Raising public awareness about privacy rights and surveillance practices is a necessary precondition to mobilising the political will that is necessary for reform of the law and the ending of impunity.”
Roberts mentioned any legislative modifications applied in the six international locations – comparable to a single, devoted surveillance regulation that supersedes earlier laws – would give civil society a “point of leverage”, and that the inclusion of privateness rights in their constitutions might already present a method for pushback towards abusive surveillance practices.
“There are good examples of using strategic litigation in South Africa and Kenya to push back against state surveillance and gain some concessions and reforms,” he mentioned. “The hope is that even in Sudan or Egypt, the place the nice circumstances [for civil society] don’t actually exist, the truth that it says in the structure that this proper [to privacy] is inviolable is a possible level of resistance.
“It is important to build capacity on the ground in each country to document, mitigate and overcome illegal surveillance that violates human rights. This requires working with journalists to raise public awareness, working with lawyers to enable strategic litigation, and working with researchers to monitor, document and analyse.”
But Roberts famous that even in international locations such because the US and UK, the place civil society has a better potential to problem human rights violations, governments and companies nonetheless usually act with impunity, as proven by the aftermath of the Snowden revelations, when courts dominated that the US National Security Agency’s behaviour was unlawful. “There were no consequences for any people, and as far as I’m aware,” he added.
Tech companies facilitate and allow unlawful mass surveillance
Roberts mentioned surveillance has reworked dramatically in only a few a long time on account of technological development – from an “expensive and time-consuming business” the place total groups of individuals with totally different abilities had been wanted to manually surveil only one individual, to a way more automated course of the place AI and algorithms may be deployed to scan digital communications en masse.
He mentioned there are broadly three classes of surveillance expertise being utilized by the six African governments: social media surveillance, sign intercept surveillance and cell phone spy ware.
Social media is used, for instance, to profile residents and commodify this information to be used in covert election manipulation by political public relations companies, whereas sign interception of web or cellular information is facilitated predominantly by US and Chinese corporations promoting AI-based programs that allow distant, automated key phrase search of personal communications, he mentioned.
According to Roberts, these corporations embody the likes of IBM, Palantir and Cisco in the US, and Huawei, Hikvision and Dahua in China.
“These three types of surveillance have been brought to public attention by the Cambridge Analytical affair, the Snowden revelations and the Pegasus spyware scandal,” he mentioned. “In all three sectors, the surveillance technologies and services are being sold by for-profit companies in the global north to states in the global south – fuelling a descent into digital authoritarianism.”
In the case of Pegasus spy ware, Roberts mentioned the corporate behind it, NSO Group, “is only one of a dozen Israeli companies – and Israel is only one of a dozen countries from the global north – supplying surveillance technologies to African states”.
He added: “The Pegasus story, worrying as it is, is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a fast-growing multimillion-dollar global market in supplying surveillance technologies to states that use them to violate the rights of their citizens.”
However, Roberts mentioned “nobody has a comprehensive understanding” of which entities are concerned in offering surveillance tools, including that researchers are nonetheless in the early phases of understanding precisely which corporations in the worldwide north are supplying which applied sciences to which governments.
“In Nigeria alone, their budget for surveillance technologies was in excess of $100m a year,” he mentioned. “Nigeria is a big country, but there are 53 other countries just in Africa, so it’s a huge market that’s growing very quickly and is proliferating, not just in terms of volume, but in terms of sophistication and lots of different new technologies being rolled out.”
Cutting off the availability
In April 2019, throughout its investigation into the UK’s position in Saudi Arabia’s warfare on Yemen – which has seen vital breaches of worldwide humanitarian regulation on account of what Amnesty International has referred to as “indiscriminate and disproportionate air strikes” – Channel 4’s Dispatches was told by a former BAE Systems employee that with out help from the arms firm and the UK authorities, “in seven to 14 days, there wouldn’t be a jet in the sky”.
In response to Computer Weekly’s questions on whether or not the six African governments might maintain their present surveillance practices with out the help of international corporations and governments, Roberts mentioned the shortest path to ending their “descent into digital authoritarianism” is to chop off the availability of digital surveillance applied sciences.
“Currently, they don’t come from within Africa, they come from Europe, North America and China,” he mentioned, including that due to their navy and regulation enforcement purposes, most of the surveillance applied sciences being deployed would come via the arms commerce provide chain.
While the report itself famous that additional analysis is required to map which corporations are supplying which surveillance applied sciences to which states, Roberts mentioned individuals from the international locations the place these corporations are primarily based ought to start campaigns to finish the availability.
In August 2021 – following Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International’s publicity of how the NSO Group’s Pegasus spy ware was getting used to conduct widespread surveillance of tons of of cellular units – a variety of UN particular rapporteurs referred to as on all states to impose a world moratorium on the sale and switch of “life-threatening” surveillance applied sciences.
They warned that it was “highly dangerous and irresponsible” to permit the surveillance expertise sector to turn out to be a “human rights-free zone”, including: “Such practices violate the rights to freedom of expression, privacy and liberty, possibly endanger the lives of hundreds of individuals, imperil media freedom, and undermine democracy, peace, security and international cooperation.”
In September 2021, the United Nations’ excessive commissioner on human rights, Michelle Bachelet, referred to as for a moratorium on the sale and use of AI programs that pose a critical threat to human rights as a matter of urgency.
