…over mobile phone registration
Posted: The Chronicle | Thursday, December 17, 2009
By Charles Takyi - Boadu
Issues have started emerging over the decision by the National Security, to ask mobile phone service providers in the country for a mandatory registration of their subscribers.
An Accra-based legal practitioner and Partner at the Bentsi-Enchil, Letsa and Ankomah Chambers, Ace Anan Ankomah, says the move is illegal, and should not be made to fly, since it smacks off of insecurity and the invasion of privacy.
He has accordingly advised the government and the National Security to take a second look at its decision, since it in one way or the other breaches individual privacy, as guaranteed under Article 18(2) of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana.
The Article states expressly: “No person shall be subjected to interference with the privacy of his home, property, correspondence or communication, except in accordance with law as may be necessary in a free and democratic society for public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the protection of health or morals, for the prevention of disorder or crime or for the protection of the rights or freedoms of others.”
In a letter to the ministers of Communication and Finance, dated December 14, 2009, and copied to the Minister of Information, the Majority and Minority Leaders in Parliament, and the Director-General of the National Communications Authority, Ace Ankomah noted that the Constitution guarantees the citizens’ right to privacy of ‘correspondence’ and ‘communication,’ and also provides that this right can only be interfered with in accordance with law.
Ace says he is well aware that the National Security has been pushing behind the scenes for a long time, and recently in public, for the mandatory registration of the details of all mobile phone subscribers in Ghana.
That notwithstanding, he also said he knew they now want to set a deadline before 25th December 2009, for the mandatory registration of all new customers, indicating that this is to be followed (at a date that has not been specified yet) by the disconnection of any existing, unregistered customers.
For this reason, the lawyer sought to know the legal basis for which National Security was demanding the ‘registration’ of mobile phones, and therefore unrestricted access to citizens’ details, from telecom operators.
He wondered whether there had been any suggestion or evidence that telecom operators have been cheating on the ‘Talk Tax, which would then require the implementation of the monitoring of communications to “enhance compliance.”
“Is it the case that at present, the police, national security and the military have easy access to individual mobile phone details, by simply writing letters to telecom operators, without any court orders?” he asked.
By this move, he asked whether government wants to compel telecom operators to send all their signaling through ‘black boxes’ it owned, which would monitor all call traffic (i.e. the originating and destination numbers, the time and length of call), and report the data back to itself in real time, or will know the identities of those making calls, who they call, and how often they call and the time they call.
Though the government may not be able to decipher the actual words of voice calls, Ace Ankomah said, “it will be able to read every single SMS coming into and leaving networks, and know every website that a person visits on his/her phone or mobile internet device.”
By simply maneuvering the signaling channel messages, he noted that government would be able to interrupt, process, intercept, block and/or divert calls in order to eavesdrop and know every single detail of happenings on the intercepted calls, without the knowledge and/or the involvement of any competent judicial authority in Ghana.
Mr. Ankomah therefore noted that the current proposed implementation would allow the government, not only to know who is phoning whom, but also (i) from where to where (with accurate location placement), and (ii) whether a person is roaming, and in which country and on which network, indicating “by this means, it is possible to (i) change signaling so that although a specific call is made, all traces of it can be removed or disguised, so that no one can trace its origin or destination, and (ii) create an SMS or call that never existed?”
This, according to him, was evident in the fact that telecom traffic travels in two types of paths, the ‘voice path’ at which the actual conversation moves from one network to another, and the ‘signaling path’ being the means by which one network can communicate with the other about a pending call; and that text messages pass through the signaling path. He also asked which path the government wants to monitor.
Ace Ankomah has thus asked those in-charge to help provide justification for the move, since according to him, it smacks of fear of insecurity.