Are You Still Holding Your Tongue?

Around one year ago the Uganda parliament passed a law that made it mandatory for all phone companies to have a permanent link to the government Communications Monitoring Centre. Reason: the security can prevent terrorism and treason by having unfettered access to the private conversations of Ugandans.

Previously, as in many other countries in the world, the police would have to get a judge to sign a court order authorising a phone tap. And this was on a case by case basis. This was obviously required in order to protect the civil liberties of the individual citizen.

However, it is commonly believed that illegal and unconstitutional phone tapping has been going on for years, only it could not be mentioned in public and subsequently such evidence is inadmissible in a court of law, as evidence acquired through an illegality is basically null and void.

All that is required now for your phone conversations to be tapped is authorisation from either:
Minister of Internal Affairs
Minister of Defence
Head of Internal Security Organisation
Head of the External Security Organisation
Inspector General of Police
Commissioner of Prisons

There is no oversight, no checks, no balances, no protection of my civil liberties.
The sad thing is that we have all said absolutely nothing!! Not a squeak. So either we are too afraid to say anything or we believe the line that Uganda is under clear and present danger of a terrorism attack.

What I do know is that everybody I talk to seems to watch their words very carefully and often we have to drive to a meeting place to complete the conversation. What goes unsaid is that someone might be listening in on our conversation. The benefits of modern communications are all lost and we are back to the basic face to face chit chat of days gone by. May be that’s not such a bad thing, but its happening for all the wrong reasons.

Am I just paranoid or are you watching your tongue too?