Kenya Human Rights Commission

KHRC’s Ernest Cornel and Distruption Network Institute's Tatiana write that telecom infrastructure has made us part of a surveillance system without our consent. Because this infrastructure is woven into nearly every part of daily life, the surveillance it enables can be difficult to see, yet the data it generates allows the state to trace movements, relationships and patterns of life.

The consequences are serious because such surveillance can undermine our fundamental freedoms and presumption of innocence, and, in Kenya, has been linked to cases involving enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

Their commentary draws on new research by Namir Shabibi, Telecoms, Ubiquitous Surveillance and State Crime: A Case Study from Kenya. Read the research: https://disruption.institute/fellows/namir-shabibi

Disruption Network Lab’s Berlin conference, “TESTING GROUNDS: The Kill Cloud, AI & Migration Control,” will explore these issues further. Event details: https://www.disruptionlab.org/testing-grounds

KHRC and MUHURI condemn the detention of five MUHURI staff and a board member by Kenya Defence Forces officers.

KHRC is seeking a consultant to examine citizens' contradictions in the application of Ethical standards across the social, public and electoral Spaces in Kenya.

KHRC warns El Niño rains could worsen human rights violations under the Ruto regime and demands a rights-based response.

“As always, it is the most marginalised communities – such as the ethnic Somali and Muslim border and coastal communities of Kenya – that bear the brunt of pre-emptive suspicion that pre-crime analytics of telecoms networks entail. After all, to fight ‘small wars’, one needs to sift through ‘big data’.”

⚡ New Research – Read Now 🔗 https://dnlb.org/ns ⚡

📃Telecoms, Ubiquitous Surveillance and State Crime: A Case Study From Kenya 👤 Namir Shabibi, Independent Investigative Journalist

Namir Shabibi’s research draws on his journalistic investigations into the role of telecoms companies in the ecosystem of tech and state crime. It argues that what was once an authoritarian’s dream has become our everyday reality, with life or death implications in global majority countries.

⚡ Also see:

📃👀 Architecture of Disappearance: The Kill Cloud’s Dispersal of Violence and the Erosion of Sovereignty – 👤 Cian Westmoreland, Whistleblower, Former US Air Force Drone Technician.

⚡Upcoming:

📃👀 Oct 5: Automated Extraction: Tactics of Surveillance and Targeting Indigenous Peoples at the US-Mexico Border 👤 Tiara Roxanne, Scholar & Artist.

🗓️ 🎟️ Nov 27–29 Berlin Conference: Testing Grounds: The Kill Cloud, AI & Migration Control - with Cian Westmoreland, Namir Shabibi, Tiara Roxanne & many more.

🔗 See https://dnlb.org/links

Publishing Partner: Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).

The overrepresentation of commercial spyware in state surveillance investigation and accountability initiatives has helped to obscure the most common vector for mobile surveillance; telecoms networks themselves.

⚡ New Research – Read Now 🔗 https://dnlb.org/ns ⚡

📃Telecoms, Ubiquitous Surveillance and State Crime: A Case Study From Kenya 👤 Namir Shabibi, Independent Investigative Journalist

Namir Shabibi’s research draws on his journalistic investigations into the role of telecoms companies in the ecosystem of tech and state crime. It argues that what was once an authoritarian’s dream has become our everyday reality, with life or death implications in global majority countries.

⚡ Also see:

📃👀 Architecture of Disappearance: The Kill Cloud’s Dispersal of Violence and the Erosion of Sovereignty – 👤 Cian Westmoreland, Whistleblower, Former US Air Force Drone Technician.

⚡Upcoming:

📃👀 Oct 5: Automated Extraction: Tactics of Surveillance and Targeting Indigenous Peoples at the US-Mexico Border 👤 Tiara Roxanne, Scholar & Artist.

🗓️ 🎟️ Nov 27–29 Berlin Conference: Testing Grounds: The Kill Cloud, AI & Migration Control - with Cian Westmoreland, Namir Shabibi, Tiara Roxanne & many more.

🔗 See https://dnlb.org/links

Publishing Partner: Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC).

⚡ New Research – Read Now 🔗 https://dnlb.org/ns ⚡

📃Telecoms, Ubiquitous Surveillance and State Crime: A Case Study From Kenya 👤 Namir Shabibi, Independent Investigative Journalist

🔎 INSIGHT
The past decade has seen the growth of tech companies exploiting sensitive telecoms (cell site) data, offering the predictive identification of criminal suspects, border and migration monitoring, and tracking of suspects, among others. Yet there is no ‘opt out’ from this form of ‘ubiquitous technical surveillance’. Namir Shabibi’s research draws on his own journalistic investigations into the role of telecoms companies in the ecosystem of tech and state crime. It argues that what was once an authoritarian’s dream has become our everyday reality, with life or death implications in global majority countries.

👤 Namir Shabibi, Independent Investigative Journalist
Namir Shabibi is a visiting lecturer in Geopolitics, and a Quintin Hogg-sponsored PhD candidate researching covert intelligence operations in global majority countries. Shabibi also leads the Working Group on Telecoms, Spyware and Surveillance at the University of Westminster, and conducts research for Unredacted, a national security investigative project. He is a former International Committee of the Red Cross delegate investigating breaches of the Geneva Conventions in Darfur and Guantanamo Bay.

⚡ Also see:

📃👀 Architecture of Disappearance: The Kill Cloud’s Dispersal of Violence and the Erosion of Sovereignty – 👤 Cian Westmoreland, Whistleblower, Former US Air Force Drone Technician.

⚡Upcoming:

📃👀 Oct 5: Automated Extraction: Tactics of Surveillance and Targeting Indigenous Peoples at the US-Mexico Border 👤 Tiara Roxanne, Scholar & Artist.

🗓️ 🎟️ Nov 27–29 Berlin Conference: Testing Grounds: The Kill Cloud, AI & Migration Control - with Cian Westmoreland, Namir Shabibi, Tiara Roxanne & many more.

🔗 See dnlb.org/links

Publishing Partner: Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC). Reviewer: Ernest Cornel Oduor (Senior Communications Officer, KHRC).

On Saturday, we marked 11 years since the unveiling of the Mau Mau memorial monument. KHRC’s Davis Malombe writes that Kenya’s current generation of young people should be able to stand before the monument and understand that the freedoms they exercise today have a history. The right to assemble, speak, organise, and challenge authority is inherited from a tradition of resistance that stretches from the anti-colonial struggle through the second and third liberation and into today’s struggles for constitutionalism, accountability and democratic space.