Govt wants your phone info for five years

SHINOVENE IMMANUEL and CHARMAINE NGATJIHEUE

THE government has moved a step closer to spying and storing Namibians’ mobile communication for five years.

This was revealed despite concerns by civil society about privacy and the abuse of power.

Spying concerns date back to 13 years ago when the Namibian parliament passed the Communications Act of 2009.

Even though the law was passed in 2009, the section authorising the interception of phones is not legal, since its regulation is still pending.

Known as Section 6, the clause deals with the setting up of interception centres.

Civil society has strongly warned against mass surveillance, saying it is open for abuse by state officials such as the police, and that there is a lack of supervision of the officials who would be tasked with requesting intercepted information from telecommunication companies.

The government, however, appears to be determined to push ahead with the interception of calls.

Last week, Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (Cran) chairperson Heinrich Mihe Gaomab II gazetted a raft of new regulations to implement the Communications Act of 2009.

This was aimed at supplementing regulations gazetted in March last year by minister of information and communication technology Peya Mushelenga to do the groundwork for the interception and monitoring of cellphones.

The new regulations would be enforced when Cran notifies all service providers, the regulator said.

The gazetted rules said telecommunication service providers like MTC and Paratus are compelled to store information related to the telecommunications of clients for five years.

Telephone numbers and other customer identification details, such as date, time and duration of the telecommunications and internet protocol addresses would be recorded.

The regulations stipulate that telecommunication companies are to obtain the name, address and identification document of every customer.

If the customer is a company, it should provide information such as its registration number, business address letterhead, as well as information identifying a company representative.

The new rules also target residents of informal settlements.

“Where a person resides in an informal settlement and cannot provide an address contemplated in the regulations, the service provider may accept any other address, including that of a school, church or retail store, where a person usually receives his or her post,” the regulations state.

Minors would be prohibited from buying SIM cards without an adult representative.

“A service provider may not conclude a contract allowing a minor or a person under legal guardianship to obtain a SIM card,” the regulations say.

Telecommunication companies can, however, provide a minor with a SIM card if they are accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.

A school teacher, community leader, religious leader, or caretaker may provide a sworn statement in cases where the minor does not have a parent or legal guardian.

‘DANGEROUS TERRITORY’

Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) research associate Frederico Links yesterday warned about the blanket monitoring of telecommunication devices.

“The conditions that have now been gazetted move us closer to bulk surveillance of Namibians, which means the invasive collection of all of our communications data, and the storage of such data for five years,” he said.

“This sort of dragnet surveillance would have a profound impact on our constitutional right to privacy, as nothing we do or say in the digital or cyber sphere would be confidential.”

Links said this would impact journalists and their confidential sources, lawyers and their clients, and doctors and their patients.

“The concern that we at IPPR have consistently voiced is that such sweeping data collection and storage responsibilities have been placed on companies, while law-enforcement and intelligence services have the power to request and access our data at any time without our knowledge,” Links said.

According to him, the burning issue is the lack of adequate supervision of these entities and how they intercept, store and access our data.

“This is counter to global moves to create more transparent oversight mechanisms to bear in the surveillance realm,” he said.

Cran chief executive officer Emilia Nghikembua yesterday said the Communications Act does not introduce, nor authorise the interception of communications in Namibia.

She said the only laws that authorise and set the parameters for interception are the Criminal Procedure Act and the Namibia Central Intelligence Service Act.

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