A report by Millicom in February 2017 has revealed that the Nigerian governments is one of the top African governments constantly asking for user information from digital communities.
The report has led to fears that the privacy of citizens is being infringed upon constantly. The report, called Law Enforcement Disclosure Report, showed that Facebook, Twitter and Google have received many of such requests.
The report now throws up the question of what the true extent of governments’ surveillance of citizens’ communications and censorship of content across the world is. African governments, reportedly make requests for subscribers’ data and content removal.
The Millicom report embedded in a recent policy brief by Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) says:
“On the social media front, from five African countries being listed by Facebook among those that requested users’ details in the first half of 2013, the number on the continent has grown to 18 as at the end of 2016.
“Meanwhile, requests to remove content from Google have also grown from only Libya in 2010 and 2011, to four African countries in 2016 alone.
“Twitter, which only received one user information request from South Sudan in 2012, has since gone on to receive requests from an additional four countries on the continent. The countries which have consistently made requests for user information to Google, Facebook and Twitter include South Africa, Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya and Egypt.”
For Facebook the highest aggregated number of user information requests made from Africa have been from the governments of South Africa (32), Egypt (31) and Sudan (24).
The government of Nigeria has specified the highest number of user accounts in its user information requests to Facebook – 113, followed by Tunisia (51) and Egypt (43).
Facebook report of Africa’s user information requests Source: CIPESA
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On its own part, Google has received user information requests from 10 African countries since 2013.
The countries are: Algeria, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, the Seychelles and South Africa.
It was also revealed that over three years, Kenya made the highest number of user information requests to Google – 21 relating to 32 user accounts – followed by South Africa and Nigeria.
Aside from eight requests made by the Kenya government during the second half of 2013 relating to 11 user accounts, of which Google complied with 63%, all the other requests were rejected.
Google requests from the Nigerian government
Source: CIPESA
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The report also says: “Over the past five years, five African governments – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and South Sudan – have made user information or content removal requests to Twitter.
“Nigeria and Kenya have made three “emergency requests” each, of which one by Kenya in the second half of 2016 was complied with 100% and two by Nigeria (one in the second half of 2015 and the other in the first half of 2016) were also fully complied with.”
Twitter user requests from the Nigerian government
Source: CIPESA
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ZENITHBLOG.com earlier reported that the federal government dismissed reports circulating on the social media that it has mandated that ministry of interior to monitor and record all phone calls and social media posts made by citizens.
The minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed, described the reports as false and misleading in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday, April 10.
Watch this ZENITHBLOG.com video on social media trends in Nigeria:
Source: Zenithblog.com
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