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"id": 194055,
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"speaker_name": "Mr. Mungatana",
"speaker_title": "The Assistant Minister for Medical Services",
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"content": " Thank you, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving this chance to make my little contribution to this Motion. This is one of those Motions which are spot on and are actually needed in this country today. Therefore, I congratulate hon. C. Kilonzo for, once again, rising to the occasion and bringing a Motion that will give us the law that we currently require. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, right now, the statistics in this country show that in Kenya alone, on a daily basis, an average of ten million short messages are sent. This converts to four billion short messages per year. The issue at hand is that with these kind of volumes and communication that we are experiencing right now in Kenya; is it right for the Government and Parliament not to bring a law that will regulate this kind of flow of information? Obviously, that question answers itself. We need to have a law that will regulate the kind of information that flows within these short messages. That is why I support this Motion. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, in the 1990s when you wanted to purchase a mobile phone, you would spend about Kshs300,000. It was an exorbitant cost, separate from the SIM card, which would be about Kshs12,000. Apart from the forbidding costs, you were supposed to go May 14, 2008 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES 1027 through a clearance procedure by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). The CID would subject you to some form of clearance. You would be asked questions and your identity registered. They would get to know whether or not you are a criminal. They would get to know your criminal record and take your finger prints. They would also get to know your history as far as law abiding is concerned. There was a clear procedure that was available and it was not restricted to any persons. This procedure was going on even for people who were supposed to be VIPs. Even for us who were in private practice in those days, if you wanted a mobile phone, you had to go through serious processing by the CID, irrespective of the fact that you were actually a lawyer; an officer of the court. This tells you what it actually means to have a system that communicates and nobody knows who you are. From the point of view of security, it was taken very seriously. How low have we fallen from those standards? We have fallen totally from those years to date. Today, you would walk on the streets of Nairobi, like the Mover of this Motion said, and get SIM cards almost for free. Actually, SIM cards are issued free by competing mobile phone service providers. They do not care! What they want is simply to sell. The word \"SIM\" means Subscriber Identity Module. There is something about the identity of that subscriber. That is the meaning of \"SIM.\" We just say \"SIM card\", but actually it is Subscriber Identity Module card. It means that even the people who set up to provide us with mobile phones, they were well aware of the security implications of the SIM Card, and they even named it: \"Subscriber Identity Module (SIM)\" so that we can know the identity of the subscriber. It is a crucial thing for purposes of security. Even the people who manufacture or who are basically interested in making money, they were interested in making sure that there is some angle to it of security provision. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, with an anonymous SIM Card nowadays, you can send an anonymous Short Message Service (SMS) to any person without any fear of being exposed. We need a law that will deal with this anonymity of the subscriber, because even the subscribers themselves know that they have no fear of doing funny things. That is why statistics from the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) originating from a survey they did during the campaign time state that, at the height of the campaign, there were some subscribers who were receiving at least 50 hate messages per day. We were being bombarded by this political party and the other political party, and they were sending all manner of hate messages. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Permanent Secretary then in charge of Communication, Dr. Bitange Ndemo, and I am being informed that he still is the Permanent Secretary, he was requested to do something about it because it was becoming a bit bad. He got a list of, at least, 1,700 people who had forwarded multiple messages to people during the General Election campaigns, and these messages were hate messages. But even after gathering the list of 1,700 subscribers, he admitted that there was no proper law in existence in Kenya right now that can deal with people who were misusing that communication flow by spreading hate messages. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, if the Permanent Secretary in charge of Communications and the regulatory body of the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK) is saying that there is no law to regulate this, then there is every reason for us, as a Parliament, to provide that law. Therefore, we should, as hon. Members here, support this Motion with all unanimity that we can gather. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, we need to have this law, again, because unlike the radio, and you will remember even during that time, the Minister then in charge said that he is not going to allow live radio call-in because, again, they were being used to perpetrate the same hate messages. He did that for radio because right now in radio, you can simply move and do something about it. It is more difficult to spread hate through radio than it is through SMS. There is nothing that has been done about the SMS. Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, this law is good, it should be supported; it is timely in 1028 PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES May 14, 2008 Kenya and I also join those who are calling for a further spread of the use of mobile services to remote areas. I hope the Minister for the Development of Northern Kenya and other Arid Lands will collaborate with the providers to ensure that we have this service everywhere. My time is gone! I support."
}