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{
    "id": 784302,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/784302/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 126,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Hon. Ng’ongo",
    "speaker_title": "",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 110,
        "legal_name": "John Mbadi Ng'ong'o",
        "slug": "john-mbadi"
    },
    "content": "I want the Committee to look at that aspect. Even though that provision is good as it will help fight fake news, how is it going to affect the fundamental freedoms and our rights? Clause 23 of this Bill talks about seizure of stored computer data during an investigation. There is a requirement that an investigation officer can seize a computer system during investigation. This at first looks impractical. More importantly, how is the application going to be checked so that we do not allow police officers to misuse the same provision to punish innocent Kenyans? We have seen many times in this county where good laws have been applied wrongly. You find a law that had very good intentions being applied by security agencies to victimise and punish innocent people going about their daily business without any problem. I am happy that the Chairman of Departmental Committee on Administration and National Security has stated that they are going to propose amendments touching on the issue of getting warrants or conducting searches without warrants. I do not know why we are legislating on this. We tend to imagine that getting a search warrant is such a difficult thing. Getting a search warrant, if you have a case, is so easy. You can do it in record minutes. Why do we want to make it look like there are things that we need to do which may not require search warrants? The end result is that we are going to use to same provision to violate, infringe and interfere with the freedom of Kenyans. People who have supported certain provisions in law thinking that they are good have ended up being victims of the same provisions. Under Clause 24, you say you will give power to search without warrant in special circumstances. What is “special circumstances’’? Unless you define concisely in specific terms what special circumstances’’ is, I would be hesitant to support such a provision in law. The moment you allow security agencies to define for themselves what a special circumstance is, they will just decide to raid Mbadi’s house because special circumstance has dictated so. Many a times, laws on security like crime prevention have always been used to insert provisions that in the long run cause suffering to us. Clause 27 provides for expedited preservations and partial disclosure of traffic data for service providers. This requires clarity. We need very clear definition. This Bill is lacking one thing. Given that it is targeting crime, you need to be very specific in defining those specific crimes. I know lawyers like Otiende Amolo are here. They will help us appreciate that definition is very important, that a word can be interpreted in many ways if it is not properly defined. In law, you cannot just allow words to be applied anyhow. We need to include in this Bill all types of crimes because we do not want to legislate all the time. We want to legislate holistically. There are issues that need to be added. I can see my time is almost running out. We need to add child sex tourism, online bullying, unlawful disclosure or obtaining personal data, liability of legal persons and other crimes that are not covered here. We also need to define cyber identity theft and many other things. Finally, we need to support this Bill because it is long overdue. We needed this law early enough to deal with some of the problems that we have gone through. We have also to be careful The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}