I fear I may have already used this tile on one of my blogs but the weeks events will serve the purpose well.
The first is the decision to create and give our free Internet for users in the Kampala and Entebbe area. The second is the release of the state of the Internet report 2015.
All this has taken place at a time when the candidate for the Forum for Democratic Change made his way back to the Homeland after a very tough year (and a bit of a break with some travel to Europe and the U.S).
We did struggle a little during the elections when the Internet was disconnected. The new ICT minister went on to lament about government's inability to control the Internet (making reference to Virtual Private Networks-which Ugandan users have made use of to bypass the local Security measures).
The business community and users such as myself raised concern about this development knowing well that our businesses from blogs to web site design and hosting depend heavily on having online access. We were troubled too when the budget was released and it become clear that which the exception of the backbone authority and it's roles in regulation, there would be very little money devoted to Information Communication Technology. The best we could do, I argued was to make sure we leveraged our skills in other sectors which were heavily dependent on technology to at least keep afloat.
The decision to give out free Internet therefore is received with some measure of suspicion. The aforementioned report in Internet freedom shares a lot regarding each east African country and it's perception of surveillance from its government. So the primary concern regards surveillance and monitoring for users but it also creates an strange battle between government and private sector and telecoms in particular especially with the drives that they have had to reduce the costs of their services and the roll outs that they have had of free Facebook and some other social media tools.
This is why the brief questionnaire has been viewed with suspicion (name, date of birth, gender, address- is asking for a lot just to use the network).
I suspect that we might see a wedge between telcos and government with the possibility of the former fighting on behalf of citizens in defense of their rights to privacy.
But users need to be careful using wireless networks wherever they are. These networks are perhaps some of the most vulnerable and those who access them often do so at their own risk. The mobile device and its sim card also stores and makes available basic searches by identifying the provider and other details that can be traced back to the user. The difference is that you do enjoy some measure of protection based on a written or unwritten agreement with your service provider.
The text below shows you some of what can be derived from a basic search and the informaiton that is shared in a standard browser under the HTTP (hyper text transfer protocol). In the search below I simply ask my search engine for Information about renewable energy infographics.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=ipad&p=renewable+energy+infographic&pcarrier=MTN-UGANDA&pmcc=641&pmnc=10
As you can see from the link given above, everytime you perform a search using a device, the device identified the carrier based on the sin card installed. The sim card is usually configured to work with a certain carrier and to use a defined APN. The same card also usually connects to the Internet using a set of pre-defined networks masts that corresponds to the provider.
CARRIER:
PMCC:
PMNC
The most important law in this regard is the interception of Communications act 2010 which used in conjunction with anti terrorism legislation stand to be misused unless challenged by practitioners.
But we are also hoping that businesses will be allowed to thrive whatever their political affiliations so that people can invest in more secure platforms for themselves instead of depending in handouts from government and telcos but that as far as we can see is a long shot.
