SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
guinea
Guinea: Protect Phone Users' Privacy
Mass Data Collection Could Expose Personal Information
Feb 05, 2016
The Guinean government should ensure telecommunications companies are not required to hand over in bulk the personal data of mobile phone users, Human Rights Watch said yesterday in a letter to Prime Minister Mamady Youla. The government should enact measures to ensure that any intrusion of phone users' privacy is necessary, proportionate, and clearly defined in law.
On January 6, 2016, Guinea's telecommunications regulator, the Authority for Regulation of Mail and Telecommunications (Autorite de Regulation des Postes et Telecommunications, ARPT), sent a letter to Guinea's four major mobile phone companies saying that the ARPT planned to "put in place a center for control and oversight of traffic (voice and data)" to verify revenues of service providers for tax assessment purposes, but that could also allow access to personal data.
"While governments should be able to enforce tax regulations, they shouldn't do that in a way that impinges on the right to privacy," said Cynthia Wong, senior Internet researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The ARPT shouldn't put in place any system that gives them access to customers' sensitive personal information."
In a January 19 letter, three telecom operators stated that they would not comply without greater clarity about the objectives and legal basis for the request. ARPT representatives told Human Rights Watch that the information was sought for tax purposes only and that they would meet with phone company operators to try to resolve the issue. Human Rights Watch received information that two of those companies had agreed to comply with the government's request.
The proposed system, if connected directly to the telecommunications company's networks and billing systems, could allow the regulator to monitor all data and voice traffic and, if misused, would give the operator, the regulator, and potentially other government departments' back-door access to customers' call records.
As part of the implementation of the new system, the ARPT had also requested access to parts of the companies' phone records - known as "CDRs" - for the month of December 2015, as well as the necessary technical information to decode the CDRs.
Although CDRs do not reveal the contents of a phone call, they can include the phone numbers of both parties on the call, the time and date, the call duration, and even the approximate location of the people making the call. Such data can reveal sensitive information about a person's contacts and movements, especially when aggregated. Indeed, this information often can reveal more about a person's private life than the actual content of conversations.
While governments should have the ability to enforce telecommunications and tax regulations, requests for documentation should not disproportionately burden the right to privacy and other related rights. If phone data is being sought for other reasons, such as national security or law enforcement, then any government request should require judicial supervision and specific justification, and should be targeted only at individuals suspected of wrongdoing.
The Guinean government should clarify whether, in requesting records from phone operators, the ARPT, or any other government agency, has obtained or will obtain sensitive customer information. Any sensitive customer information acquired in response to the January 6, 2016 request should be deleted.
Before moving forward with future requests for call data or with a central control system, the government should ensure the necessity and proportionality of any method used to verify tax revenue and prevent fraud that involves intrusions on privacy. The government should also ensure that any effort to gain access to data held by telecommunications companies respects privacy and other rights.
"While Guinea's phone companies have an obligation to accurately report on their revenue and tax obligations, they should resist any attempt by the government to obtain access to sensitive personal information from their customers," Wong said. "Phone companies should also be transparent about the government's demands and the information they share with it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
World Bank Announces Package of Aid and Loans to Ebola-Affected Countries
As the Spring International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings open, the World Bank announced $650 million of new grants and concessional loans to the countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. About $220 million will be aid in the form of grants and the remainder will be in the form of highly concessional loans. Currently the three countries owe a combined $518 million to the World Bank. Liberia owes $105 million, Guinea $186 million and Sierra Leone $227 million.
Apr 17, 2015
As the Spring International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings open, the World Bank announced $650 million of new grants and concessional loans to the countries of Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. About $220 million will be aid in the form of grants and the remainder will be in the form of highly concessional loans. Currently the three countries owe a combined $518 million to the World Bank. Liberia owes $105 million, Guinea $186 million and Sierra Leone $227 million.
"We urge the World Bank Group to consider bolstering their commitments with a new debt relief package for the impacted countries," said Eric LeCompte, executive director of the religious development coalition, Jubilee USA Network. "We applaud the new aid for the affected countries and hope that the World Bank can come up with some rapid response plan to address this kind of crisis much faster in the future."
The new financing is through the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA). The IDA determines its lending terms based on the borrowing country's risk of "debt distress." The new IDA financing will be distributed as approximately 50% grants to Sierra Leone and Guinea and 100% as loans to Liberia. The loans will be repaid over 25 to 38 years. In February, the IMF announced $100 million in debt relief for the three West African countries and called on governments to contribute $70 million more. The IMF also set up a new debt relief fund for poor countries struck by natural disasters or health crises.
"As a development institution, we need the World Bank to respond faster," said LeCompte, who serves on United Nations expert groups on debt. "It's ironic that the innovation for dealing with this crisis and future crises is coming from the IMF, whose mission is not development. World Bank innovation would look like a permanent facility to solely administer grants when the poorest countries face crisis."
Keep ReadingShow Less
West Africa's Ebola Death Toll Continues to Climb: WHO
The international body has now confirmed nearly 20,000 infections in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea
Dec 20, 2014
The Ebola death toll in the three West African countries most impacted by the virus has climbed to at least 7,373 of 19,031 known infections, the World Health Organization revealed in data released Saturday.
Western Sierra Leone is the "hotspot" of the ongoing outbreak, according to the WHO, which notes that this country has the highest infection rate, followed by Liberia and then Guinea.
However, Liberia accounts for far more Ebola deaths, leading some to question the accuracy of the WHO's statistics on infection rates.
Nonetheless, the data shows an increase in overall cases, which are up by 500 since WHO data was last released on December 17.
The numbers were released following news Friday that Sierra Leone's top-ranking doctor had succumbed to Ebola, making him the 11th of the country's 120 doctors to die from the disease, according to the Guardian.
Meanwhile, humanitarian aid workers have criticized the global community for its failure to respond adequately as West African governments and grassroots initiatives such as the Citizens Alliance to Stop Ebola in Liberia struggle to stem the ongoing emergency.
"The international response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa has been slow and uneven leaving local people, national governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to do most of the practical, hands-on work," the NGO Doctors Without Borders//Medecins Sans Frontieres declared earlier this month.
The lackluster global response comes despite the fact that Western-driven economic policies played a key role in gutting West African public health systems.
"People are still dying horrible deaths in an outbreak that has already killed thousands," said Dr. Joanne Liu, MSF international president. "We can't let our guard down and allow this to become double failure, a response that was slow to begin with and is ill-adapted in the end."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular