Tuesday, October 29, 2013

NCC: Cybercafés under pressure, additional cost- Sesan

        
The Chief Executive Officer, Paradigm Initiative Nigeria(PIN), Mr Gbenga Sesan has said that the directive issued by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to the cybercafés to register users will  add more pressure and more economic cost to their operations.
Sesan made this position known in an exclusive chat with DigitalSENSE Business News during an internet intermediary liability workshop organised by PIN in Lagos, stressing that many of them are already under burden, while many have closed shops simply because they cannot afford the cost of power and the cost of internet access.
He explained that it is contradictory that a government that is seeking more access is creating more bottlenecks in the part way of those who are providing public access in the first place.
“There are not so many cybercafés in the first place so why focus on them for that, simply because of cybercrime. They are getting it wrong, that’s the NCC, because cybercrimes can be committed from a phone right now. It is not cybercafés and if you say phones are registered it could be committed from the laptop.
“I don’t think they thought this through properly in sense of registration of individuals who come to use a public terminal. The second point there is the fact apart from economic cost there is also the dearth to access. There is an internet freedom report that is done annually for every country and so one of the things mentioned is obstacle to access, and so what NCC has simply done is to place a major obstacle in the part way of access in Nigeria. The thing that they might be experiencing will be fake names like the incident where Mike Tyson was registered to vote in Nigeria in 2007.”
The PIN boss said that there is no data privacy law in Nigeria and there are data of citizens all over the place, data with telecom companies, NCC, Federal Road Safety Commission, and Immigration and there is no regulation and guideline on how data is used, and stressed that “85 million mobile numbers of citizens who innocently registered is available for sale for N5, 000 publicly in Nigeria each by state.”
DigitalSENSE Business News recalls that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) issued a public notice signed by Director of Public Affairs, Tony Ojobo ordering cyber café licensees and operators to maintain databases of subscribers and users, including their full names, physical addresses, passport photos and telephone numbers to assist in investigations into cyber crime, if necessary.


Anthony Nwakaegho/GEE

 DigitalSENSE Business News
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Pix:Chief Executive Officer, Paradigm Initiative Nigeria(PIN), Mr Gbenga Sesan

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