From WikiLeaks

The Kenya Anti Corruption Commission & Internet Censorship in Kenya – an Exercise in Futility

MWALIMU MATI (CEO, Mars Group Kenya)

May 29, 2008

In what amounts to an excellent impact indicator, the Government of Kenya is blocking access to one of its own websites, according to a Daily Nation story by Fred Mukinda. The website in question belongs to the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission!

For the last year or so, the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission has been using an anonymous whistleblower reporting web based system developed by a German firm. The BKMS system allows whistleblowers to open accounts online and to make anti-corruption complaints, and if necessary submit documents; safe in the knowledge that no-one will now who they are (not even KACC) unless they choose to reveal their identity.

According to the Daily Nation story “Whistleblowers’ Computer Link Cut” which quotes the KACC spokesman, Nick Simani, “a few Government departments” are trying to monitor or restrict access to the KACC system by government computers. Some “senior officials” have instructed IT personnel to monitor civil servants visits to “forbidden web pages” such as those of the KACC corruption reporting system. Until, we have a whistle blowing law in Kenya such behaviour by Government (as suspicious as it looks) is not illegal. Whistle blowing legislation will come, and it will criminalize such behaviour, because Kenya signed and ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption on December 9th 2003 – and is therefore obliged to make what these “senior officials” are doing illegal. In the meantime, KACC should put its foot down and publish the names of the Government Departments involved. When we checked the only ministry which had a direct link to the BKMS was the Ministry of Tourism.

This incident shows clearly, that some people in the Government of Kenya are afraid that internet whistle blowing can bring accountability to bear in frightening ways. They are right to worry. Technology is making whistle blowing easier and safer and there is even a Kenyan precedent.

Last year a long suppressed government commissioned investigation report by Kroll & Associates leaked from within the Kenyan Government and ended up on Wikileaks, the mother of all anti-corruption whistle blowing websites in the world about 4 months before the elections of 2007.

In months to follow, the Kenya related content on that site grew at such a rate that an entire page is today devoted to Kenyan leaks. Apart from the infamous Looting of Kenya series, there is never before seen material about the Charterhouse Bank investigation; a confidential World Bank investigation of its road projects in Kenya; a payroll scandal at Egerton University; and material related to the Presidential election of 2007 including secret political party documents.

Wikileaks to a large extent made its bones on these Kenyan exposes, and has gone on to defeat powerful enemies of transparency ranging from secretive banks through the military to religions and freemasonry. Earlier this year it won a precedent setting internet freedom of expression court battle in San Francisco, in which the Judge actually reversed himself.

The moral of the story? The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. To those within Government who are minded to try, we would say: “It is an exercise in futility to instruct your IT departments to block staff access to the KACC website. It is really futile! If it’s not the KACC system, it will be Wikileaks. And that’s one place where your ‘seniority’ won’t count.”

First appeared as: http://www.marsgroupkenya.org/users/?p=110