Wake up call for the government as sophisticated phone crimes hit the country hard

By Ohaga Ohaga

It’s without a doubt that twelve years after the introduction of mobile telephony in Kenya, so many things have changed.

The long queues witnessed at the phone booths are gone; there is no carrying of coins to deposit while phoning, no reverse calls, and the communication just got friendlier and better.

However, this seems to be the much we can celebrate as sophisticated phone crimes hit the country hard.

For the last few weeks, the country have experienced an extreme upsurge of crime in form of abductions, kidnappings, extortions and intimidations through mobile phones as criminals infiltrate our telecommunications system.

The once ‘must have’ devices are now causing a lot of discomfort in many family setups who have had their relatives abducted and later ransom demanded through untraceable phone lines.

The situation has given security forces sleepless nights as they try to find the genesis of the problem and have now come up with a hypothesis that mobile phones are the reason for the upsurge of crime in the country.

They say that since these devices are easily available and at friendly prices with lines from any of the networks being sold everywhere including highway stalls and from hawkers- the criminals are taking advantage to harass and extort the public.
Unlike Egypt, Switzerland and other counties in the world, Kenya does not control the activation and subsequent use of mobile phones.

This means that anyone can walk into a shop buy a phone and instantly activate and start enjoying services without any further bureaucracy on the identity of the subscriber.
This lack of proper administrative structure in registration of subscriber details by mobile phone companies is what experts are claiming to be one the source of the crime.

This security lapse has therefore given kidnappers, extortionists, murderers, and even terrorists loophole in our telecommunications system.

Nevertheless, the government seems to have heeded to the wakeup call and issued a directive to have all subscribers registered.

Following the many abduction and extortion cases, the president issued a directive to Ministry of Information and Communication to put in place an elaborate data bank that will ensure that every phone number is traceable to its user.

According to the president, the move will regulate increasing sophisticated crimes and series of abductions in the country.

As much as I would like to agree with the directive I am skeptical about the privacy of the data bank that will monitored by the government and would like to be assured that before I register my account, the data bank account will not be misused in any way by the security forces or government agents.

In the past years similar data banks and private information have been misused by the security agents and politicians who hack and access ones email account, besides intercepting, or tapping ones call without observing individual’s privacy rights.

I must also note that the registration alone of subscribers will not reduce crime as criminals can always find another way to do their business.

Just like carjackers steal and consequently use the car to commit a crime, the phone criminals can steal someone’s phone and use for criminal purposes. Besides who said they cannot register with fake or wrong identification?

The fight against the crime is welcome but a long term solution need to be put in place- not for fighting sophisticated crimes alone but also guarding the privacy of subscribers.