Gov’t Secretly Gathering Citizens’ Personal and Momo Data From Telcos -Uses for Political Campaign Suspected.

Whatsup News can confirm that in the guise of Covid-19, the Akufo Addo administration has instructed controversial private telecom auditing firm, Kelni GvG to gather personal data of Ghanaians, including the Mobile Money transaction records.

The lid was blown on this clandestine move by the ruling party when telecommunications giant, MTN Ghana said it refused the government’s overtures.

MTN Ghana was forced to make this revelation after a private citizen had sued the telecom giant to disallow it from releasing his personal data to the government.

 In its response to the lawsuit, the telco explained that it refused to hand over vital personal data to Kelni GvG because it has “utmost respect for the laws of Ghana including the protection of privacy of persons particularly the privacy of its subscribers.”

The move by the Akufo Addo administration was in the guise of helping contact tracing for the Covid-19 coronavirus, but MTN said the request being made by the government through Kelni GvG became suspicious when the request wanted telephone numbers of subscribers as well.

Critics are certain that the government was requesting this detailed personal information of subscribers with the aim of possible political influence-peddling or targeting of opposition elements as Ghana braces for the December general elections.

According to MTN was ready to comply with the directive that will only aid contact tracing, however, Kelni GvG wanted more detailed personal data of every MTN subscriber. Normally, telecom operators can provide the government with subscriber details but what the Akufo Addo administration was asking for was way beyond the legal limit.

 KelniGVG reportedly, “requested not just mobile money transaction details of subscribers but also that the subscribed numbers be un-hashed and therefore supplied without any privacy protection whatsoever.”

 “There is no way that a person’s mobile money transactions can assist in contact tracing as such transactions cannot by the most basic scientific understanding aid the spread of the novel coronavirus,” MTN said in its affidavit to the lawsuit.

The revelation has confirmed long-held speculations. Now, civil society groups are expressing worry at the unbridled control that government wants to exert on the personal lives of citizens. “As Citizens of Ghana, we are concerned as our priceless collective individual freedoms are being pecked at capriciously, the ultimate price is unimaginable. Therefore, we call on the country’s Justice System as the custodian of the conscience of society, to use its mandate to guard the rights of the citizenry, and uphold the sanctity of the constitution in this regard,” stated think-tank Centre for Socioeconomic Studies (CSS) in a statement released today, May 24, 2020.

In line with the Electronic Communications Act, 2008 (Act 775), President Nana Akufo-Addo ordered network service providers to avail user information to help in contact tracing to combat the Covid-19 coronavirus disease spread in Ghana.

Reports from international media expose how the world over, governments with dictatorial tendencies have used the excuse of Covid-19 to take away personal liberties of citizens.