Democratic Republic of the Congo case study
This case study seeks to answer two questions: What are the explanatory factors for the low interest of Congolese civil society in the issue of surveillance? How could civil society actions limit the abuses of surveillance? The case study utilises two incidents – one successful, and the other unsuccessful - to account for low monitorial interest on the part of civil society organisations and suggest ways through which they can be engaged in action that limit surveillance abuses. The first incident relates to the introduction, since May 2020, of the Registry of Mobile Devices, or RAM. Through this registry, the government is collecting the identities of mobile phone users called International Mobile Equipment Identity, or IMEI, numbers. However, civil society saw the risk of espionage and feared that by having a database that contains everyone's IMEI addresses, the government will be able to track an individual. Following a successfully organised intervention and enormous pressure from civil society, the government finally abandoned this project. The second incident concerns the surveillance of political figures and civil society actors, lawyer and activist Heri Kalemaza and a former security advisor to the Head of State, François Beya Siku. In these cases, courts were used to convict defendants, based on evidence obtained from surveillance, and to date, civil society has not been able to use these cases to reduce the scope for surveillance against political and private opponents. By analysing these two critical incidences the case study clearly articulates how public oversight can be successful, and inhibiting factors that can make it fail.
Newspaper articles
Tresor Musole Maheshe, ‘RDC: l’avenir de libertés numériques est au coeur de l’actualité, cas du journaliste Stanislas Bujakera’, JamboRDC, 10 May 2024