Day: October 8, 2021

DAR ES SALAAM— Tanzanian government has set aside 50 billion Tanzanian shillings (about 21.7 million U.S. dollars) for the construction of a fishing harbor, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa has said.

Majaliwa said the fishing harbor will be built along the Indian Ocean’s coastal district of Kilwa in Lindi region, making it the first-ever fishing harbor to be built in the East African nation.

“The construction of the fishing harbor is intended to improve the country’s fishing industry and help boost the economic growth and improve the welfare of people,” he told a public rally in Kilwa district.

He said experts have surveyed the country’s entire coastal line from Tanga through Mtwara and recommended that the fishing harbor should be built in Kilwa district.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

LONDON— The number of countries on the UK Covid travel red list will be cut from 54 to seven, the government says.

South Africa, Brazil and Mexico come off the red list, which requires travellers to quarantine in an approved hotel at their cost for 10 full days.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said the changes begin on Monday and “mark the next step” in opening travel.

This latest move will be seen as a boost to the airline industry and families separated during the pandemic.

Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador, Haiti and the Dominican Republic remain on the red list.

Pandemic travel rules in the UK have recently been simplified, with the amber list cut, and advice against holidays changed for 32 countries.

But consumer group Which? warned the changes only reflect requirements for arriving back in the UK.

“Travellers should be aware that they may still face restrictions on entry to many destinations, especially those under 18 who are not yet vaccinated,” it said.

Arrivals from 37 more destinations will have their vaccination status certificates recognised, meaning they can avoid more expensive post-arrival testing requirements.

Vaccinated travellers from Brazil, Hong Kong, India, Pakistan, South Africa and Turkey will be treated the same as returning fully-vaccinated UK residents so long as they have not visited a red-list country in the 10 days before arriving in England.

All arrivals will still complete a passenger locator form.

The Scottish government said the changes were “agreed on a four-nation basis”.

The Welsh government said that they increased opportunities for new infections and variants, but it was adopting them because it was not practical to have its own border policy.

Announcing the latest changes, Shapps said the government was “making it easier for families and loved ones to reunite”.

He said that with fewer restrictions “and more people travelling, we can all continue to move safely forward together along our pathway to recovery”.

In addition to the shorter red list, the government said passengers would soon be able to use a photograph of a lateral flow test as a minimum requirement to verify a negative result.

This change – affecting tests taken by eligible fully-vaccinated people from non-red list countries two days after arrival in England – would come into effect in “late October”, the Department for Transport (DfT) said.

A UK government source said the government still aimed to replace the so-called day two “PCR test on arrival” with a cheaper lateral flow test by the half-term break, for many schools in England after Oct 22.

But they said the government was still working on a date for when the new testing rule would be introduced.

Under current rules, travellers must use more expensive PCR tests for their post-arrival day two screening. People who are not fully vaccinated must provide a further PCR test on day eight.

The DfT said NHS lateral flow devices cannot be used for the purpose of international travel. “Both pre-departure tests and on arrival tests must be bought from private providers,” it said.

Airlines and the travel industry praised a “much-improved system” but called on ministers to implement changes to testing as soon as possible and consider scrapping tests for passengers arriving from low-risk countries.

A spokesperson for London’s Heathrow Airport said the announced changes would “kick start a global Britain”.

“However, the missing piece to this is clarity on when cheaper lateral flow tests will be accepted, which is now critical in order to save the half-term getaway for many,” they said.

A further 40,701 new coronavirus cases were reported in the UK on Thursday, alongside another 122 deaths within 28 days of a positive test.

The following destinations will be removed from the red list from 04:00 BST on Monday: Afghanistan, Angola, Argentina, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chile, Congo (Democratic Republic), Costa Rica, Cuba. Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, French Guiana, Georgia, Guyana, Indonesia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mayotte, Mexico, Mongolia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Paraguay, Philippines, Réunion, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Tanzania, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

Police in Nigeria’s Zamfara state say security forces have rescued 187 people who were abducted by criminal gangs over the last two months.

Zamfara State Police command spokesperson Shehu Mohammed said in a statement Thursday that the kidnap victims, including women and children, were abducted many weeks ago from four different communities in the state.

Mohammed did not explain how the rescues took place but said the victims were freed from the Tsibiri forest, where the kidnappers were holding them.

Security forces in Zamfara began a manhunt several months ago to address the spate of kidnappings in the state. Teams often organize searches in forest hideouts.

Their operations led to the shutdown of telecommunication services and the introduction of curfews and movement restrictions, especially on motorcycles, in September.

Authorities say the restrictions cut off food supplies for the bandits and made it difficult for them to operate.

Mohammed was not immediately available for comment, but security analyst Ebenezer Oyetakin agreed the restrictions paid off.

“Whatever is necessary in order to contain the flame of violence that is plaguing the northwest states of Zamfara and Sokoto is welcoming,” Oyetakin said. “We can see the results since the pragmatic move to shut down the telecommunications systems in those areas. It is very beautiful and heartwarming.”

Authorities say the victims will receive medical treatment before reuniting with their families.

Zamfara state in northwest Nigeria is one of the epicenters of the kidnap-for-ransom trend by criminal gangs that gained momentum late last year.

Authorities in nearby states like Kaduna and Sokoto say the crackdown in Zamfara is driving bandits to other areas and escalating security problems there.

But Kaduna-based public analyst and community leader Abu Mohammed says Kaduna state authorities are also taking action.

“We have predicted that their source of movement is through the cattle routes, following the grazing reserves and following the national parks in their hideouts,” he said. “They have also detected other black spots within the state. So they’re trying to comb all these insurgents, all these bad eggs out, and I believe they’re doing that.”

More than 1,200 people have been taken in mass abductions from schools and villages in northern Nigeria since last December.

In response to pressure from authorities, gangs have grown fierce, attacking police formations and military bases to prevent rescue operations.

Source: Voice of America

In August this year, misconfigured power apps from Microsoft led more than a thousand web apps to mistakenly expose 38 million records on the open internet, including data from a number of COVID-19 contact tracing platforms, vaccination sign-ups, job application portals, and employee databases. Many people’s phone numbers and COVID-19 vaccination status were visible due to the leak.

This recent sensitive information exposure comes months after a joint report by Article 19, Kickanet and Pollicy revealed that in an effort to curb COVID-19, the Kenyan government used various contact tracing apps, digital surveillance technologies, and biometric technologies to track and trace citizens without regard for due process. The report further confirms that despite the heavy use of these technologies, there was limited impact or effectiveness in curbing the spread of the virus.

The government is using biometric technologies and CCTVs in public spaces for facial recognition; smartphones for call data, tapping, and geotagging; and contact tracing apps to help identify those who have come into contact with infected people. All the equipment was sourced or made locally like the coronavirus contact tracing app that was launched by the government to track passengers on public transportation.

However, some are concerned that the Kenyan government’s efforts to curb infections are seriously infringing on citizens’ guaranteed human rights of privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, and access to information. Human and digital rights activists are concerned about the surveillance of public spaces using CCTV and biometric technologies, the use of telecommunications data to “track and trace” individuals, and the coronavirus contact tracing applications.

Mobile phone surveillance

An April 2021 report by Article 19, Pollicy, and Kictanet revealed that Telecommunications data was used to track “mobile phones of people suspected of having COVID-19 as a way of enforcing a 14-day mandated isolation period” and anyone who entered Kenya who pledged to self-quarantine, in real-time. The giant telecom company, Safaricom procured phone information for the government. It is not the first time the government tapped Safaricom for a sensitive project, in 2021 they secured a contract for a 13.5 million US dollar police surveillance project.

The National Intelligence Service used phone data to track COVID-19 patients’ travels, according to the report by Article19 of East Africa. The patients were “not supposed to turn off their phones,” because breaking these official rules could lead to detention in government-run monitoring centers.

The report cites an incident from March 2020, in which a woman traveling from the United Kingdom to Kenya was monitored using her phone and taken to a government medical facility after going to work, indicating a violation of the self-quarantine mandate.

Before coronavirus apps were suggested, built, or utilized, the Kenyan government used telecommunications data to track and trace individuals through location and call data from smartphones. Neighboring Uganda also used national security and public health concerns to justify restricting privacy and data protection rights while ignoring due process, bypassing the internationally recognized three-part test of legality, necessity, and proportionality.

Data protection laws

Kenya’s 2019 data protection legislation was supposed to offer a framework for the acquisition of personal data in a transparent and rights-respecting manner. However, throughout the first year of the pandemic, documented surveillance trends and unsupervised data collecting indicated two issues.

For starters, the lack of independent oversight of these data protection rules led to a lack of enforcement and regulation implementation on data controllers and processors, including public health agencies. Second, the surveillance capabilities and practices of state and non-state actors were not limited or checked as a result of this oversight problem.

Governments have a duty to protect human rights at all times under international human rights law, while corporations have a general obligation to respect human rights in all circumstances.

Although international law allows for a temporary increase in special powers during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN Special Rapporteur on Privacy warned in his July 2020 report to the UN Human Rights Council that several minimum requirements must first be met. These include legal safeguards that ensure “surveillance cannot be initiated until, or unless, such surveillance is shown to an independent and competent body that such surveillance is legal, necessary, and proportionate to the aim pursued.”

When commenting on the problem of smartphone and contact tracing apps, the Special Rapporteur on Privacy previously stated that;

Relying solely on legislative measures is insufficient. Privacy should be considered from the start, beginning with the application’s engineering.’

Whether the app employs a centralized or decentralized approach, whether the app is deployed via required or optional techniques, whether free consent is prioritized, and whether anonymization and encryption measures exist are all important factors to consider.

Lack of accountability and transparency

Kenya lacks the necessary laws that regulate and limit the number of times mobile operators are allowed to “share with authorities the geo-location data of self-quarantined patients with confirmed COVID-19 to monitor that the patients observe self-quarantine,” as well as provide guarantees during this data sharing.

Furthermore, state agencies and private companies in Kenya have not disclosed the scope of their data sharing operations, which include the dissemination of information and data on publicly available platforms (open government platforms) and through publicly accessible resources (corporate transparency reports).

The surveillance efforts grew in response to a lack of accountability and transparency, as well as the government’s non-proactive disclosure of information from the pandemic response, making it difficult to determine whether privacy, data protection, and freedom of expression safeguards were applied.

The April 2021 report by ARTICLE 19 Eastern Africa, the Kenya ICT Action Network, and Pollicy made recommendations to the Kenyan government.

Review all measures and systems deployed to address the COVID-19 pandemic which includes data collection programmes, systems, and apps to ensure they strictly comply with the three-part test under international human rights law, and data protection principles, including data minimisation and privacy by design.

Even though surveillance has now taken a low turn compared to when the pandemic started, there seems to be no effort raised by the Kenyan government to address these human rights concerns.

Source: Global Voices

A case of Ebola has been confirmed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the health minister said Friday, five months after the end of the most recent outbreak there.

It was not immediately known if the case was related to the 2018-20 outbreak that killed more than 2,200 people in eastern Congo, the second deadliest on record, or the flare-up that killed six this year.

A 3-year-old boy tested positive near the eastern city of Beni, one of the epicenters of the 2018-20 outbreak, and died from the disease Wednesday, Health Minister Jean Jacques Mbungani said in a statement.

About 100 people who may have been exposed to the virus have been identified and will be monitored to see if they develop symptoms, he added.

An internal report from Congo’s biomedical laboratory said that three of the toddler’s neighbors in Beni’s densely populated Butsili neighborhood also presented symptoms consistent with Ebola last month and died, but none were tested.

Congo has recorded 12 outbreaks since the disease, which causes severe vomiting and diarrhea, and is spread through contact with bodily fluids, was discovered in the equatorial forest near the Ebola River in 1976.

“Thanks to the experience acquired in managing the Ebola virus disease during previous epidemics, we are confident that the response teams … will manage to control this outbreak as soon as possible,” Mbungani said.

It is not unusual for sporadic cases to occur following a major outbreak, health experts say. Particles of the virus can remain present in semen for months after recovery from an infection.

The disease typically kills about half of those it infects, although treatments developed since the record 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa have significantly reduced death rates when cases are detected early.

Two highly effective vaccines manufactured by Merck and Johnson & Johnson have also been used to contain outbreaks since then.

The 2018-20 outbreak, however, became as deadly as it did because the response was hampered by mistrust of medical workers by the local population as well as violence by some of the armed militia groups active in eastern Congo.

Source: Voice of America