Simcard Registration: Is it Big Brother at work?

A common complaint foreign investors make about Uganda is the time it takes to register a business. We have 16 procedures for registering a new business, Tanzania 12, Kenya 11, while Rwanda has only two. Not so for joining a mobile phone network. At the moment all you need is to buy a phone, the SIM card of the network you wish to join and voila, you’re connected. No paperwork, bribes, or waiting periods pending approval.

This is set to change. Starting March 1, all telecom operators—MTN, Warid, Airtel, uganda telecom, Smile, et al— will commence registering SIM cards and the details of their owners following a directive by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology released on December 12, 2011.

The move was mandated by the “Regulation of Interception of Communications Bill” passed by Parliament on July 14, 2010, three days after the Kampala Al-Shabaab bombings. It was signed into law by President Museveni that September, and provided for the “lawful interception and monitoring of certain communications,” transmitted through a “telecommunication, postal or any other related service or system in Uganda.”

The bomb blasts provided a grim and perfect backdrop for the passing of the Bill. It was intended to prevent such acts, the Security Ministry had argued since it’s unveiling before Parliament in 2007, and later findings about the planning and execution of the attacks seemed to vindicate him. With help from the American FBI, intelligence operatives tracked and arrested the bombers by following a trail that started with an unexploded bomb in Makindye. The bomb was to be remotely activated using a mobile phone, and the suspects made repeated calls to the phone to trigger it off. By tracing those calls the police was able to arrest the suspected perpetrators.

Making such investigations easier is the government’s justification for undertaking the oncoming registration exercise. Uganda has over 14 million mobile telephone subscribers who use mobile telephones for a number of other things—mobile money transfers, mobile banking and payment of utility bills—other than making calls and sending text messages. However, all these services are susceptible to abuse and misuse, from ransom demands made over telephone, fraud, money laundering to terrorist activities like the 2010 bomb blasts.

Mobile phone registration is therefore necessary and mandatory, says the government, to intercept and investigate such criminal activity. It will create a national database containing not only biographical information but also a photograph and fingerprint of all mobile telephone users in the country. With this, the police can easily attach an identity to information obtained through interception, trace phone scammers and extortionists, and fight mobile money fraud.

“If every SIM card is registered, it is likely to help us not necessarily in mobile money theft, but even other crimes,” says Venus Tumuhimbise, the Detective Commissioner, CID. “All lines will be known, therefore any lines the user uses to call during robberies, murders, theft, and terrorism can be tracked. I believe we shall be more effective in other crimes more than stealing mobile money.”

Big Brother watching
Jared Osoro, an Economist with the East African Development Bank, says this has come a bit late, and should have preceded mobile money. “You cannot have a thriving mobile money system and the SIM cards are unregistered; you must have your SIM card registered to say this is my account. It’s like having a bank account without any formal registration.”
The data collected will be of use to telecom companies and the economy too, says Osoro. It will help them keep track of their growth “for purposes of their own expansion, diversification, and product development.”

However, an official from Warid Uganda who asked not to be named so he could speak freely said telecom companies already have those statistics and “already know their customers.” “It’s a good thing, yes, but it’s more to do with the government than the telecoms.”

Although the bill was introduced by the government and, like the Warid official suggests, the subsequent Law was in its interests—it gives security agencies the powers to listen in to private conversation, monitor online activity, or intercept postal exchanges between individuals, groups and organisations if there is sufficient reason to believe it could aid in criminal investigations—the cost of implementing it was passed on to the telecom companies.

A clause in the Act requires that service providers ensure their systems can support lawful interception at all times. And this passed on two obligations and costs to the telephone companies; creating the databases and updating them thereafter, and buying the equipment that would monitor the telecommunications.

In 2009, as the Bill came before Parliament, the then MTN legal affairs head told this paper that “the cost of such equipment will be very prohibitive.”

Today, telecom companies are singing a different song. Joseph Kanyamunyu, Airtel’s Public Relations Manager, tells this paper that they “are 100 per cent committed” to the exercise, and that it “will enhance our relationship with customers.” The Warid official says it will collect comprehensive information they “might also need to make better decisions.”

Yet, won’t the prohibitive costs be passed on to consumers in the form of higher tariffs? Both telecom officials told this paper that it’s highly unlikely. The equipment is a long term investment that will give the operators a more detailed demographic picture of their subscribers, and will not affect tariffs.

Who pays the costs?
That does not mean that it’s free of negative economic consequences however; small scale vendors of SIM cards will see their businesses swept away by the exercise because registration will have to be done at designated centres that can capture personal and biometric data.

Introduced in 2007, it was not until three years later that the bill was passed into law. A number of MPs held reservations about the powers it gave to the security ministry since authority to intercept in the initial bill was reserved for it. The amended version vested these powers in a high court judge who will have to issue a warrant before any interception can be made. Still, there are reservations. Even before the law, there were reports that government was tapping communications of opposition politicians. If they were doing this while it was still illegal, what’s there to stop them from arm twisting telecom companies to spy on perceived enemies?

Joachim Buwembo, a Knight International fellow for development journalism and former managing editor of this paper reinforces the security necessity of the registration drive. “Countries are doing it for obvious security reasons. For me it’s a trade-off between genuine security considerations and how rogue security agencies can abuse it by compromising people’s privacy and journalists sources. ”

George Lugalambi, a media practitioner and former lecturer at Makerere University’s journalism school, believes that journalists will learn to work around the potential threats. “The silver lining is that journalists will be compelled to go out more to physically meet their sources, which will mean more robust verification of information. It’s harder to lie to someone’s face,” he says. Strong endorsements, considering that the press was up in arms against the bill when it was first announced.

The effectiveness of interception to fight crime is not water-proof, too. Criminals can easily set up fake identities to obtain SIM cards. Put simply, registration is not a guarantee that criminals who use mobile phones to commit crimes will always be caught, and is not a deterrent again for committed criminals. The terrorists who planned and executed out the July 2011 Mumbai serial bombings in India managed to do so with SIM cards registered using fake documents.

It also does not help that counterfeit phones, of which there is a deluge in the country, don’t have International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) codes. IMEI is a number unique to each phone, printed inside the battery compartment of the phone, and is used by service providers to identify valid devices. Crimes perpetrated with such phones might be difficult to trace.

Watch your back
The challenge therefore, since registration is here to stay, is to ensure that interception meets the goals the government intended it for, and is not abused. The former will require savvy intelligence and security agencies, as well as the co-operation of telecom companies. The latter is trickier, and calls for rights organisations to stay alert to how government uses the data it has access to. Otherwise, like Lugalambi suggests, you have to be careful how you relay information you feel the government might be keenly interested in. But that’s only if you are not planning to commit a crime.

Background
From Fred Otunnu, Manager Communications, UCC

UCC was mandated to co-ordinate the implementation of the registration exercise. We shall be monitoring the telephone operators to ensure that they abide by the timeline, March 1, 2012 ,to March 1, 2013.

We’re carrying out an awareness campaign to generally get the public to know more about the exercise and why the might want to register. It’s a mandatory exercise, and a requirement of the law. Our job will be to coordinate the operators who’ll be registering, and make sure that they do it conveniently without inconveniencing subscribers.

There will be designated registration centres in addition to the customer care centres in public places, e.g. taxi parks, and where there are many people. Operators will need to provide identification of their staff to avoid unscrupulous people who might want to illegally register customers.

SIM card owners are required to provide the information we need to know. The standard information is the name, place of location, date of birth, your picture, and identification. You can identify yourself by any of these; employment ID, Driver’s licence, NSSF card, voters card. The minimum document is a letter from the LC1 and for students, the students ID.

Registration of SIM cards is being done beyond East Africa; it’s already been done in Nigeria, South Africa and Ghana among other countries. In East Africa, it’s being monitored by the E.A. Communications organisation which brings together telecom and postal operators. The region does not have a time limit that all countries shall have completed the exercise by a certain date; rather, we agreed that efforts must be made to complete registration across the region as early as possible. In Kenya at least 80% of all SIM cards have been registered.

The exercise will last for 12 months from March 1 this year to March 1, 2013. After that date we shall cut off those who have not registered their SIM cards.

Foreigners in the country will also have to register. Requirements; a valid passport and a valid work permit.

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