By Kabelo Mollo
As people living in the year 2023 we use the internet daily in all spheres of our lives, whether it be work, play or even school, there’s little doubt about our reliance on it.
If you’re like me and you use one or other social media platform daily too. My two platforms of choice are Twitter and WhatsApp. The town Square style information sharing on the “tweet streets” is what’s got me hooked, while the social and sociable side of WhatsApp has me enamored. Even without the WhatsApp statuses it would be sufficiently sociable to keep me as a long term customer, but that feature has added something extra. An added layer to make it pop as the young people would say.
Time and again we have been warned about what these free social media platforms are selling. As the adage goes, if the platform is free, YOU are the commodity being traded. Your likes and dislikes, your posts and comments are all fodder for an eager R&D (research and development) team to mine and hand over to advertisers. On numerous occasions we post a status on our WhatsApp about one or other thing only to find ourselves bombarded by related ads on Facebook or Instagram. A reminder that our metadata has been accessed and used successfully to prime the algorithms.
We keep being reminded of what it is to be responsible online citizens and yet we keep doing utterly bizarre things that fly in the face of that responsibility and safety… We access unsafe links and URLs, we take kinky photos and share them on encrypted but unsafe platforms and we share super personal information on platforms not intended for that. All the while big brother, and dare I say “big tech” are watching! Big tech is studying how you move, building an archetype that can predict your next move in order to have an even greater understanding of you than yourself. Not only are they mining this data for innocuous reasons like advertising but they’re also retaining this data for more nefarious reasons like influence. As in the case of Cambridge Analytica and other such recalcitrant organisations, they are actually using the data they have in order to influence election outcomes. A worrying thought.
However, even more nefarious in my view is government and its role in all of this. We hope and expect that government will look after the rights and well-being of its citizenry. So when they step in and say they are going to regulate an industry we ought to sign in relief, but we almost never do. If anything when African governments especially decide they are regulating a particular space, we grimace in despair wondering what draconian measures will be enacted on the poor people of that land. The Lesotho government hasn’t disappointed with the Cyber security bill they have promulgated and adopted. It is as we speak waiting for royal ascent in spite of real challenges from various civil society organizations. There are some utterly draconian measures included in the bill as recourse. As ever the harshest sanctions are set out for those deemed to be enemies of the state. Rather than protecting the rights of the ordinary Mosotho man or woman, the bill does everything to protect the state. This is a trait that’s become standard across the length and breadth of this beautiful continent we call home.
And as usual journalists and media platforms will find themselves most likely targeted by state apparatus. They will find themselves transgressing the Cyber Crimes laws and will have those abhorrent sanctions levelled upon them. It will be like taking a sledgehammer to a mosquito. The penalties for some of the transgressions include M500 000 fine or 20 years’ imprisonment. Juxtapose that against what we read about what sanction people are getting for murder in this kingdom and you will learn that some in the higher echelons of our leadership fear journalists and media players more than murderers. Politicians are not and have never been above using the state security apparatus to keep the citizens in check. We should, therefore, be weary of the Cyber security bill receiving the royal ascent it’s on the cusp of.
After much lobbying towards the end of the 9th parliament, some players in the state suggested the laws can be amended after the fact. This is the usual lip service paid by politicians and should make nobody comfortable. We must, as active citizens invested in the greater good of our country, clamour to have the bill fixed before it gets the final ratification so that it doesn’t protect the state at the Cost of the citizens. The laws of the country must protect and entrench citizen rights first, and then the state’s interests.
We must all take responsibility for our safety and security online and all digital spaces, but our law enforcement must also do its bit with fairness in mind.
