The mandatory re-registration of sim cards ahead of 15th April deadline has gotten the attention of the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHCR).
The commission which aims at protecting Kenyans against any violations has come out to fight the call from Communication Authority of Kenya to have all inactive sim cards and those who don’t comply de-registered.
KHRC defended Kenyans by quoting instances where there has been data breaches and illegal sharing of private data.
“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.”
“Majority Kenyans registered their SIM cards at the point of purchase; yet now you’re to submit new personal data or risk de-registration/hefty fines. The govt has not done enough to ensure strong safeguards for data protection,” KHCR stated.
KHRC insisted on having the government keep the data they have safe as Kenyans are worried about the capturing of their details including photographs maybe risky.
“Without data protection safeguards in place, Kenyans are worried that their faces & personal data risk being shared with third parties. We should not normalize forced collection of personal data. We need secure systems that guarantee the protection of citizens’ privacy rights.”
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