BYOD #18: The giggle that toppled a president
This week’s round-up of digital security news and investigative journalism in Africa.
ANCIR’s weekly post offering interesting — or amusing — digital security news from around the world, and tips for newsrooms, journalists and sources on the latest security measures.
How ‘sniggering’ helped end a presidency
The corruption exposed by the #GuptaLeaks emails revealed the massive extent to which the South African state was captured by the prominent Gupta family and their cronies. Over 100,000 emails were leaked in 2017, directly implicating the Guptas and former president Jacob Zuma. Amazingly, one of the key motivations for the whistleblowers was how much they were disturbed by Zuma’s customary sniggering response to being confronted by accusations in Parliament. The key whistleblowers finally appeared to talk about the scandal, in a pre-recorded interview with amaBhungane’s Stefaans Brümmer.
The two men (who had their appearances and voices heavily disguised) said that Zuma’s characteristic ‘he-he-he’ snigger inspired them to expose the emails which had been in their possession for a lengthy period of time.
“People must see what is behind this laughter,” said one whistleblower.
The leaks were a major contributing factor to Zuma’s eventual forced resignation in February 2018.
The whistleblowers fled the country for safety reasons immediately after the emails emerged, to a place where, hopefully, elected officials don’t respond with self-satisfied sniggers when accused of wrongdoing.
Zambia approves bill to regulate social media
Zambia’s cabinet on Monday approved a bill to regulate social media — alleging it serves to improve cyber security. According to the New Times, Zambia’s government said the bill would facilitate intelligence gathering, as well as the investigation, prosecution and judicial processes to prevent and address cyber crimes.
This worrying move includes monitoring social media for crimes targeting consumer groups in the country, but it’s unclear how the government intends to do this. In addition to this, the government introduced a tariff charge on internet calls to protect jobs in the telecommunication sector.
This bill is part of a concerning trend of African governments attempting to impose control over platforms that are sometimes central to citizens playing a watchdog role.
Protests over arrest of Nigerian journalist
UPDATE: Premium Times journalist Samuel Ogundipe on Friday was granted bail and released following an accusation that he was in possession of classified documents.
Civil society groups and hacktivists are demanding the release of a detained Nigerian journalist. Premium Times journalist Samuel Ogundipe was arrested on Tuesday after his report on a security siege on the Nigerian legislature. The police wants him to disclose the source of a confidential police report that was intended for the president. According to Africa News, hacktivists have decried abuse of power by the police and said the journalist is not obliged to disclose his source.
BYOD (Bring Your Own Device/Data) refers to owning your data and digital property, and keeping it secure. This newsletter is brought to you with support from Project Shield and Code For Africa.
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The African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) is an association of the continent’s best investigative newsrooms, ranging from large traditional media to small specialist units.
ANCIR works to strengthen African investigative journalism by improving the techniques, expertise, the tools used in muckraking newsrooms. This includes providing member newsrooms with the world’s best encryption and semantic analysis technologies, to forensic research support (through the Investigative Dashboard), legal services, and seed grants for cross-border collaboration.
ANCIR is incubated by and receives technical support from Code for Africa.
