BY SAM ALFAN.
An activist has moved in court seeking to quash a directive by the Communication Authority of Kenya requiring telecommunications companies to register their customers afresh.
In a petition certified as urgent, Eliud Karanja Matindi wants the High Court to quash the directive by CA requiring Safaricom, Airtel, and Telkom Kenya to carry out fresh registration of all their mobile telephone subscribers, including subscribers who are already registered.
In the directive, Karanja says CA requires the mobile services operators to compel their subscribers to disclose all other telephone numbers registered under their names, including those registered with other mobile telephone service providers.
He says the regulator might force the telcos to suspend the services of any of their subscribers who will not have registered their mobile telephone lines as required from April 15, with deactivation of service 90 days after such suspension, if still not registered.
“Available information indicates that the 1st Respondent has ordered the 8th and 9th Respondents and, in every likelihood, the Interested Party, to suspend mobile telephone and related services to any subscribers, including those already registered, who would not have registered afresh and, as a precondition of this registration, submitted to have their photographs taken, processed and retained as a precondition of the SIM registration process,” he said in a sworn statement.
The new directive, he says, requires subscribers to present their identity card and a photo, failure to which they will be deregistered.
He is seeking a permanent order requiring the telcos to delete and expunge from their records and systems including photographs of persons who are registered mobile subscribers that were collected, processed and retained as part of registration process.
He further wants the High Court to quash the Kenya Information and Telecommunication (registration of subscribers of Telecommunication), Regulation 2014.
According to the activist, the directive from the CA is unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void and any collection, processing and retention of photographs by mobile telephone service operators is unconstitutional.
He argues that the suspension, from 15 April 15, 2022, and eventual deactivation of SIM cards and exclusion from the mobile telephone networks operated by the 8th and 9th Respondents and the Interested Party, of registered subscribers who fail to register afresh in line with the Directive from the CA, is unconstitutional and, therefore, null and void.
Karanja has faulted the conduct of the Data Protection Commissioner, KNHR, National Gender and Equity Commission and Attorney General for failing to intervene to stop or oppose CA’s directive.
