okay I think we can begin so welcome everyone to our Law Tech talk here hosted by the Law and Technology Centre I am Marcelo Thompson. I teach here at the Faculty of Law in the area of law and technology, regulation of technological platforms, and I'm most excited to welcome our speaker for today's talk Mr. Bulelani Jili, who is joining us right now from Kenya where he's conducting his research. Mr. Bulelani is currently in Kenya but he is doing uh finalizing his doctorate uh doctoral work as a PhD fellow at Harvard University where he focuses on Africa-China relations and issues in this realm from a technological perspective issues concerning cyber security, development, ICT development uh internet policy, business law more generally a law in development and Privacy Law uh Bulelani is also a visiting fellow at Yale law school, a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a cyber security fellow at the Belfer Center, uh and he's conducting his research in affiliation also with the China law development project at Oxford University I see Bulelani has a much more extensive CV which you can uh surely find online with reference to his work uh but I think this is hopefully a good introduction already to his work and in areas of interest Bulelani is going to be talking to us about surveillance initiatives in Africa casting a different light on the topic and explaining the dynamics that underpin the adoption of surveillance to surveillance in China. The title of his talk is "A technological fix the adoption of Chinese digital surveillance products in Africa" so Bulelani is going to speak for let's say 40-45 minutes or a bit less depending on how much he wants to extend the discussion but then we are going to open for discussions with the audience and I'm very thankful for all of you who are joining us today and I will ask you to please feel free to send your questions on the chat for us to engage with them later on so without further ado let me give Bulelani a warm welcome thank you very much for joining us Bulelani thank you so much for having me firstly you know I would like to kind of thank uh all the organizers of the event uh those who are within the law school and beyond the law school and I would also like to extend my appreciation to the audience members who are willing to take the time out of their day to participate in today's discussion and as stated already that you know a greatly welcome all questions um you know both uh novel and also old um uh as we kind of really attempt to kind of really dissect the general uh nature of the distribution of Chinese surveillance technologies into the global South in summary um you know today's argument and really contention is interested in exploring the both the proliferation but also the adoption of Chinese surveillance Tools in African countries I'll be mostly relying on kind of two cases um Kenya and Ethiopia and the trends um of this uh proliferation I argue really are contingent on three factors uh China's diplomatic strategy in the global South um it's technological ambitions and the kind of growing corporate reach and power of uh China's major technological firms and lastly but most importantly um African uh domestic demand factors and so in some sense you could argue that both supply and demand factors are really contributing to the proliferation and then adoption of surveillance tools and today's uh discussion is then really uh organized around three main points that I would like to kind of get across uh firstly the reasons behind the driving of the adoption of digital infrastructure including surveillance Technologies is really contingent on the particularities of local environments which will be further exploded with discussion um and then also how exactly these systems are being employed by State and substate actors so how exactly you know Kenyan authorities South African or Ethiopian authorities are going about adopting and then applying these systems will kind of come out clearly and then lastly what are some of the local challenges that emerges from the adoption of these systems particularly in kind of legal environments that are not necessarily prepared both for the mass scale of surveillance which then kind of engender domestic challenges around both data protection and privacy and so to be clear um this talk focuses on the procurement and Adoption of systems it does not presume the party States exceptional nature and the distribution of surveillance tools will seek to obfuscate the broader international market for surveillance tools and cyber intrusive systems which involve multiple Western and non-western actors um rather you know this inquiry into the proliferation of Chinese public systems in some sense is really an attempt to understand both the party States and kind of private firms geopolitical footprints in the global South um and uh much of you know beijing's kind of significant foreign policy activity is now taking place on the continent and in my broader work I actually argue that um Africa in many ways is functioning as the theater or the training ground for an emerging superpower and drawing attention to Chinese activity on the continent in some sense might give us um a prognosticating mechanism to think more carefully about you know how China will conduct foreign policy more broadly um as things uh continue and so accordingly you know um this investigation into the spread of digital surveillance Tools in Africa then offers us a grounded sense for making examinations into how the party States both Ambitions and corporate formativities are entangled and are critically in many ways mediated by local state and substate access and so the talk and more broadly my work then aims to expand and extend our understanding of kind of local and Global risks like come with the adoption in these systems while providing um really greater insights into the kind of client decision-making processes um which I believe is kind of critically understudied and examined in a kind of General uh literature um um and I should also preface this General uh comment on the general nature of current discussions around uh you know Chinese surveillance tools um really I'd say um across the literature but also in some uh key policy discussions the general predilection is to presume uh Chinese intentions um around the application and Adoption of systems in the global South um those discussions I think a keenly marked with presumptions about Notions of backdoor access or a kind of brand strategy uh that is interested in further diminishing say U.S influence in the global South and so uh while those are kind of key presumptions uh that my work speaks against and alongside it it's not directly challenged or worked through within this presentation but if people wish to have a kind of more clinical examination into those kind of presumptions I open it up um as a possibility of discussion specifically in the Q a but the presentation thus far is in some sense uh about grounding our discussion in a in local context so that way you know uh we can in some sense align our facts and then kind of have um a more robust theoretical discussion later um and so in some sense the size and then the scope of this talk you know does not in many ways um permit an exhaustive review of the global ecosystem of surveillance systems and proliferation instead as indicated you know uh primary attention is given to the both the spread and then the adoption of these systems in local contexts and the example of Kenya has been precisely being selected to help explore how China's growing cyber Footprints is mediated by local States uh actors and how how China's diplomatic engagement and corporate expansion is consistently uh in dialectical relation with the local the case of Kenya in particular has been selected uh not simply because uh of uh the fact of much of my work being uh conducted in Kenya is that uh Kenya uh has thus far received the largest number of ICT loans from Beijing uh in fact Kenya and Ethiopia the last two really three decades in fact um have received consistent attention uh as relates to ICT development from Beijing and so they become the easiest places both to trace the involvement of Chinese firms but also of the party's involvement in the supporting of Developmental initiatives around the intersections of development and ICT what is also most interestingly is that both of them also offer us an interesting contrast of political and legal systems um you know Kenya is considered to be you know a relatively healthy democracy juxtaposed to Ethiopia who has a more kind of closer system and it is a diversity political systems that also then helps us to think more carefully about exactly how Beijing engages with the local um in contrasting political environments um and more importantly um you know I believe that the talk um in some sense is both a commitment and an emphasis on kind of African religion recognizing its salience as a way to kind of go beyond both myopic representations both of Africa as a passive recipient and partner in Africa China relations and so the kind of inquiry is is really about trying to find activity where it's been consistently under locked or overlooked um or simply um ignored so when you we are looking at uh current work and this includes uh media coverage um you know uh most discussions about the distribution of Chinese surveillance tools and availability platforms consistently you know scrutinizes uh China's diplomatic activities and would then ask us questions about the degree to which the party state with the aid of course of private firms which is a presumption enables uh digital autocratic practices across the global South um you know these accounts you know speculate um on the level of coordination between Beijing and its corporate actors uh while the degree of coordination cannot be empirically fixed or established Financial incentives in the form of loans and Aid are used to support African State procurements and the proliferation of surveillance tools and so majority of the general discourse around the space consistently uses uh loans as The Leverage points but also the beginning point of how to understand uh beijing's influence um in the context of Africa but more broadly actually across the global South as a girl and so accordingly um several interconnected economic policies and initiatives that help um Chinese firms gain overseas infrastructure development experience are also primary sites of consideration uh obviously the most prominent one is the uh go out strategy or of 1995 and much of a general literature also focuses on this point as another point of considerable consideration when we're thinking about beijing's um consistent activity uh across the global South obviously this policy in particular was really about Surplus Capital being lent abroad to create novel commercial opportunities um for Chinese firms and the goal of assisting the internationalization of domestic firms was a part about improving Chinese brand recognition globally easing Fierce domestic competition and then exploiting commercial opportunities made available in part by the absence of U.S investments in Africa and so the kind of the time Horizon for this for people to
really consider is really from about 1995 things to really honestly to the uh years of the uh early years of the Trump Administration um which had a kind of um really a pragmatic shift in terms of U.S policy on Africa where they moved away from uh Aid to trade which was the kind of the tagline um of the Trump Administration and the kind of the Biden Administration is um really continued with this line and in some sense has tried to say uh that we will now be consistently competing uh with China on the African continent which you know foreshadows generally a heating cold war between kind of both International stakeholders which again you know um it's worth kind of uh dissecting and you know I hoped kind of expect some questions around that line um in the kind of the Q and A um and so you know while China's surveillance systems uh are mostly you know confined to its National borders uh the private firms then make its surveillance architecture possible or selling some of these tools to an African customer base uh more specifically you know firms uh like Huawei have initially worked to expand internet connectivity in a country like kenyam but in 2014 they also began selling their Smart City products um and so huawei's initial involvement in Kenya has already stated began simply with internet connectivity activities which is really something of the early 2000s um at the time Kenya didn't have a significant degree of connectivity and Huawei was able to provide some of the kind of fiber optic cable infrastructure that was necessary to begin the digitization process of the Kenyan markets and then consistently provided support both at the level of both software and then later on firstly with hardware and then later on software um and now you know um Huawei is consistently uh provided uh infrastructure like Cloud infrastructure which has become really the kind of the linchpin of much of the kind of the Kenyan e-government initiatives and so proponents you know of this move uh argue that you know public security systems uh particularly in the context of Kenya provide vital intelligence to authorities uh who are also acting as a kind of a deterrent to kind of criminal activity uh and so that's the the general line uh of reasoning uh behind uh the adoption of smart City surveillance systems in the context of Kenya um uh that is stakeholders both at the level of the nation-state but also uh substate actors mostly at the city level um again what is usually lost in some of these General discussions is that uh procurement and is taking both at the national level but also at sub National levels mostly at the city level where majority of these systems are being adopted and then installed and so if you look if you listen to the voices of say people like Adam Lane who's the deputy CEO and of government Affairs at Huawei Kenya he consistently Echoes this General sentiment by contending and here I quote authorities can now conduct uh paramedic video surveillance of nairobi's urban center as well as maintain a highly agile command and dispatch setup that runs on satellite-based GPS and software-based geographic information systems end quote um and so and so yet you know this sanguine Outlook does not account for or some of the real risks of exacerbating established problems like the misuse of public security systems and debt stress levels these are obviously two really kind of key issues at the local level at one level there's been consistent documentation of the exploitation of uh you know public security systems specifically against kind of political dissidents that example is not heavily featured in the context of Kenya but is in its neighboring countries including Ethiopia and Uganda and another obviously Paramount General issue is the level of debt stress levels obviously uh stop being particularly covered yet in the stock but I definitely open it up to kind of conversations in the Q a um debts between Africa and China in some sense has now become one of the kind of key uh threadlines of discourse um and Kenya like um almost every other African country um has a level of debt uh that is in some sense both worrying but has also been a general feature of its relations both between the global North and South but also now between uh South South kind of um relation um and so continuing with uh with the talk you know surveillance Tools in some sense in the context of Kenya uh are then really enlisted uh by the Kenyan government's primarily as a means to kind of scale public security capabilities uh National Security prerogatives and then data security um the adoption of surveillance tools is made possible through the sale of Chinese equipment and soft loans from the China Axiom bank which are crucial in making the public security platforms both financially reachable for Nairobi as well as for other African governments including Uganda and Ethiopia and so beyond you know companies like Huawei Chinese companies like vision and others are also involved in the adoption of digital surveillance systems in Africa and what is quite clear is that much of Africa's surveillance systems are not you know a commitment of Simply coordination say between Huawei and um and Beijing but rather the hodgepodge assemblage of multiple kind of systems that are being procured from multiple uh private vendors and in 2012 you know the Kenyan government for example awarded um Nanjing information technology which is a kind of a high-tech provider that offers Urban traffic management and urban governance tools attender to supply digital surveillance cameras um the goal of this initiative again was to augment public security and Intelligent Traffic Management Systems in downtown Kenya um and you know according uh to official figures um the platform cost the government about 3.8 million US Dollars um you know the initial uh date of completion was about uh 2013 um however uh due to delays uh the project was only completed in April 2014. um constant power shortages and access to privately owned buildings for installation purposes were the Cardinal reasons for uh delays um no less important the adoption plan for these tools did not include corresponding data protection measures to promote uh and maintain privacy rights rather inadequate planning was done really before the start of the program which presaged the delays and then the data policy omissions and so while Chinese firms promise a technological fix to traditional problems like say Public Safety and State security which is made most evidently clear in some of the promotional materials that they hand over to the kind of African government counterparts they really under deliver in those areas um more pronouncedly journalistic investigations and digital rights organizations have consistently raised concerns about cyber security threats uh digital surveillance and biometric data collection by these Chinese surveillance tools these groups contend that the ubiquitous and under regulated use of these Technologies in the context of global South really threatens privacy rights and needless to say the adoption of digital tools without robust institutional checks and balances they believe render citizens more vulnerable to State surveillance and suppression and it is this gap between the novel uh digital uh technological adoption and Regulatory Frameworks of adoption that then creates the emergence of risks a point you know that I hope to kind of further elaborate on as you know both as a talk continue use but also as a part of the Q a because that's really where some of my most Salient work I believe um it's really uh tracking which is the gaps between the adoption of systems um and the absence of kind of regulatory Frameworks currently available in the context both of Kenya but also other uh Global South countries and so China's you know oversized role in kind of uh Africa's ICT markets um and genders a dependency on their products and expertise uh uh if you're looking really continentally for example about 70 of Africa's ICT infrastructure capabilities is built by Huawei Alone um and then the the rest of the involvement is really from other kind of Chinese private firms and so you know digital public security systems uh are embedded within States driven processes that are kind of contingent on some of these kind of public private Ventures um they arrive under the banner of digital development uh and in some sense they're really a continuation of and already established trend of ICT development projects across uh the global South but in this case in particular in Kenya and the use and effectiveness of these tools though nominally operated by and for the purposes of the Kenyan government are heavily Reliant also on Chinese contractors to operate the public security platforms uh in fact an audits done in 2018 by the auditor General's office found that uh senior staff sent over by the Kenyan government to China to learn how to operate some of these public security systems in fact do not acquire the necessary training um instead the staff spend time inspecting the parts of the system to be delivered and during that visit no attempts were really made to learn or teach how to operate the system and for this reason questions remain about Kenya's means to operate and maintain its public security systems and what is more the technical matters having to do with the upkeep of the system I'll then also managed by contractors the national uh police commission who are tasked with the response ability of operating the system here locally had not developed really the capacity to even work the control room and so to exasperate these matters the manual language of the control room was in fact in Chinese in the early years um and most kind of kind of Kenyan civil servants um you know use English as usually the kind of language of General instruction and so most of the digital surveillance cameras installed within say uh nairobi's Central business district have also stopped working months after they were installed and what is even more worrying is that they were limited security protocols for accessing the system um this unfortunate circumstances then also increase the possibility of unauthorized access or the launching of uh malicious code on the server by unwarranted um users and so these are some of the really current challenges um with this system here and so the you know uh the lack of evidence that approves the public security system's ability to truncate crime does not get to the promotion of the public security platform thus far in Kenya uh for example uh just using the example of Huawei again you know about a stock they've installed about 9 000 cameras uh also in the CBD area of Nairobi which supports about 195 police stations um and yet within those given areas of the adoption of those systems um crime rates have kind of continued to rise and so really there's no way in which one could in the most simple sense really draw direct correlation between the adoption of public security systems and the reduction of crime yet you do see a growing nature of General challenges in the procurement of these systems um and so in fact in the case you know of of Kenya but also you know in the case of other African countries this has become um say an obvious Trend at least to some of us who are you know carefully looking into some of the general Prime data that's being made available by the National Police Services uh you know I've I've consistently tried to ask actually the National Police Services if they're willing to have an interview about this General challenge that they've generally kind of refused to kind of have a conversation about it but um Adam Lane uh again the deputy CEO of government Affairs at Huawei Kenya has consistently circumvented some of these concerns by simply contending um that Huawei quotes uh huawei's role is to develop install deploy and maintain the technology according to the requisite and request of the National Police Service and the National Police Service is responsible for operating it and using it according to their policies which are in line with the national law end quote um this framing I argue is rather reductive if not completely misleading it rests somewhat simplistically on an All or Nothing approach to the responsibility of challenges and some negative outcomes of the adoption of these systems the argument obviously draws attention to the behavior of the National Police which I think is important and some of my above comments have already but it really says nothing about the consequences of the sale of these systems or whether regulations are necessary to mitigate negative outcomes although it is obviously true that the adoption of these systems has scaled the state's capabilities both to so they are citizens but also to Target citizens and so I believe that this Frame then really obfuscates systematically some of the activities that companies have been involved uh in involved with in doing underground and also simply then blaming the National Police Service while not necessarily also looking into how some of the general challenges are also connected with their own kind of personal activity um on the continent and so in thinking about some of the local challenges would you know like to you know spend some time thinking about some of the data protection laws that are currently available in the context of Kenya Kenya currently has a data protection act uh really since 2019 um and then there was a data commissioner who was then later installed in 20 in 2020 and really the data protection act aims to manage and protect data once it is acquired processed and stored um the country's Constitution sees privacy obviously as a fundamental right and as it stands there are no kind of clear regulations as to how for example Kenya's biometric databases or facial recognition technologies will be used or how the data will be vetted there are no means to audit the algorithms that empower the facial recognition technologies that have been installed across the city and including the airports and in November you know the appointment of the data commissioner has not resulted in kind of the kind of consistent rollout of means of regulating uh some of the both kind of digital and non-digital surveillance cameras that have been kind of installed across narrow beam and so thus far it seems as though that there are no real clear plans to deal with uh kind of the growing nature of surveillance uh and you know this lack of saying of of clarity but also really the absence of auditing uh these surveillance systems only then generally exacerbates some general uh anxieties about the use of the surveillance systems by local stakeholders and the growing adoption at argue of kind of Chinese surveillance tools both in Kenya but more generally on the continent and the US's ambition to mitigate the channel spread all these tools I believe is in some sense encouraging a general bifurcation of the world and in some sense staging Africa and the global South generally as a theater for a dispute uh between China and the US this General division between uh what I call procurers and non-procures of Chinese surveillance systems does not actually support U.S interest or really the health and inclusive posture of the kind of
international liberal order it kind of crucially further ignores also the real political challenges and financial motivations behind the procurement of some of these systems as a kind of already highlighted uh you know the primary reasons uh for their procurement in the context of say Kenya is really for the promotion of at one level dealing with traditional challenges like crime and Terror and then the more broader level some of the digital infrastructure gaps that Mark the very beginning of the digitization of the economy um and this particular point this particular last point that I made I believe suggests that it's a national observers can then not afford a really a parochial approach and message to the risks posed by some of these Technologies the message shared uh with the world must in some sense speak to you know some of the challenges confronting African leaders and partners and you know working with African authorities to build digital infrastructure uh and implementing data protection measures and addressing some of the kind of traditional challenges like crime it's definitely one way people can kind of go forward and policies you know I believe you know that meet local stakeholders specifically local Global South stakeholders uh is critical in kind of making inroads and making changes foreign and you know and I will try and at least end you know this talk on this one final notes and then you know I hope you know there are questions in abundance you know in giving you know an intelligible account of China's expanding geopolitical Footprints you know it is Salient to underscore party State Ambitions and activities in Africa uh while also Illuminating how these aims are mediated by you know local States and substate actors um digital surveillance tools on the continents are consistently listed as a way to kind of ameliorate Social Challenges and developmental challenges but also there are way to index and catalyze uh development and indeed while these Ambitions on the first on the surface are very laudable by African governments uh with that the kind of requisite checks and balances these systems seem to consistently pose risks uh to civil liberties uh particularly in a region that is consistently struggling with challenges at the intersections of governance policing and crime and and so I argue that work must then be done to drive the maturation of legal measures to mitigate some of the negative consequences that are clearly a derivative of the intensification of surveillance practices uh that are connected to domestic it is also important to kind of have a more proportional posture to how uh Global and local forces are mediating and creating an outcome uh that is exacerbating traditional challenges on the continent so I leave it there and I hope you know to you know have some more of a live discussion with some of you okay uh thank you so very much I really enjoyed uh your presentation and uh the more complex landscape that you have outlined there that uh uh explains uh the more simplistic account that we often find uh both in relation uh to Africa's uh uh demands and concerns and in relation to uh China's uh International uh Ambitions and and intentions and uh I would be more than happy to entertain questions by the audience and I really I would really encourage you all to please uh ask your questions in the Q a box so that we can see them and address but while I wait for you uh uh I will kick off our discussions here with some questions uh to bully learning really really enjoyed your presentation and the first thing that I would like uh to know uh from you um is uh is the following uh not in our approaches to the topic we tend to think of uh African countries as developing countries uh but the Assumption uh on the other hand seems to be that China is the developed One China that China is a fully developed uh uh Global power whereas the reality is also more complex in this respect and you have outlined there are many challenges uh that uh local regulatory systems face in relation to how projects don't work well the absence of a fully developed regulatory landscape for instance in relation to privacy and data protection and you explain how the US is just a coming uh into uh this whole uh uh scenario with a different approach now treating questions as a matter of of Trades than rather than simply as Aid seeing that there is the needs to uh out compete China in its relations with Africa uh this has been going on though for a while from a Chinese perspective engagement with uh with African countries uh and what was uh in the uh in the past years is that in China itself uh only more recently uh we have uh developments uh in in the Privacy area for instance only now we have a data protection landscape uh fully in place uh and in in other areas as well right algorithmic regulation and uh that e-commerce laws right these are all recent constructions in China the rule of law as it is today is a more recent uh phenomenon uh in China and it's important nuanced one uh in China as well as we understand now in your view uh does this help to explain in part uh why the the offering of these services to attend uh local demands which as you explained very well is not only a national thing it's at it right it comes from the national level from the local level and from from public and private actors uh as well but can the absence offer regulatory landscape of course be explained in part from uh uh African countries on a development trajectories and and the fact that they still a lot of work to be done but can it also be explained in part uh by the absence of the very possibility that uh a Chinese companies or the Chinese government uh itself uh could offer a model uh to uh uh uh Inspire to provide a justifications and and a framework for African countries to implement policies in in this regard as well sure for sure I I completely agree that in some sense you know the absence of uh robust regulatory uh environments is really simply contingent in part because of the General State of countries you know African countries developmental you know uh place but also um they themselves have not necessarily you know um uh really thought through some of the general kind of uh outcome and consequences of the general procurement of these systems um and so in some sense it's it's about you know date developmental stage it's also in part because uh Chinese you know stakeholders themselves uh you know have not necessarily advocated for regulation although um in funny enough now in quite most kind of some of the most recent meetings that I've been able to attend and they have been actually speaking about uh the necessity of kind of data policies um but also you know I would argue you know on more generally you know um you know this is not a general unique feature you know even in the context of the United States you know uh you know you know alphabetic regulation for example is something that's new uh you know I was literally sitting on a conversation about kind of AI regulation in the context in the United States this very weak um uh and so in some sense you know uh you know one can't you know give um a unique attribution to this particular challenge to China or Africa or the United States um my work in particular and part is interested in the gap between uh regulation and adoption and pop because I think it creates an unnecessary challenge for African countries who are interested in an inclusive development whilst simultaneously that General gap for some odd reason also seems to be um a consistent launch pad for other kind of inquiries specifically inquiries that presume Chinese intentions in development in the context of of Africa uh that General gap for say you know the uh cyber security community in the United States uses it as a way to presume Chinese intention about say malice intention about you know exacerbating uh you know civil liberties as a way to promote uh what is believed to be kind of you know uh Democratic backsliding right but that is kind of the The prominent um line of discourse in the context both of kind of the American Media but also um in the context of some some policy spaces within the context of the US um and so that gap for me in some sense is both important to kind of understand locally World simultaneously also to realize that that Gap in some sense um is also really a fantastic image that's structuring this course in the context of the United States and that's some kind of important kind of really work through as to why does it have so much inertia in the kind of American public imagination thank you very much uh any any further questions if not I'm going to keep asking here uh would anyone like to uh type something if you if you do please a few absolutely free really welcome at your questions um this uh presentation our discussion here has uh focused on surveillance and concerns with surveillance concerns uh with the idea that the intentions of China may be to export uh in authoritarian model of governance even though as you highlighted a different uh countries in Africa are then conflated uh perhaps in a a unit dimensional approach that says all them right as as seeking to absorb this same practices where the political environments as you know very well are so so diverse between countries and themselves and the idea of surveillance on the other hand is not something that is and needs to be necessarily approached from uh a dimension of authoritarianism surveillance is at the very origins of the modern nation state you cannot have State Building if you don't have any form of surveillance practices in place you give example of law enforcement practices it is a necessity that surveillance Technologies are in place uh so perhaps the the the great question to to be asked uh it's a question of extent of what of proportionality which you know very well of what practices are acceptable or not acceptable uh from both public and private actors we are just seeing this week uh this past week has been a busy one with the introduction of artificial intelligence tools right being made available uh to the public and as we use those Technologies we have learned the ourselves to this universe right releasing our personal attributes there and a reinforcement learning processes in machine learning they depend on the evaluation of of feedback or on the appraisal feedback Authority how people interact with the system and how the system learns depends basically on the evaluation of of the inputs and all these we're seeing the development and this is just like right that we're just a a poking our faces there at this whole new universe which is unfolding uh here and this is just the beginning of something very very large that that will be developing uh from now on which is uh a reality where the private sector is well in the private sector in developed economies are not only shaping how these systems are going to unfold but also shaping how our identities are expressed within and recognized within uh these systems which is a much larger issue of uh of of surveillance as well right um so uh to what extent do you see uh uh issues of of surveillance as a necessity uh uh that African countries uh generally uh have to put in place practices to to develop their uh our own communities to ensure order in ways that some countries right uh have uh uh relied on for the development of their own uh systems as well yeah for sure I I guess we kind of hear that and I think I could probably be on to it in kind of a two-pronged approach um I say definitely firstly if one is thinking about surveillance as a modernist invention uh you know one can uh trace it um you know really all the way back to the invention of the general modern prison which functions in some sense is a it's a place both of uh uh incarceration but also as a place to make social observations of prisoners as a means to ensure both correction and social intervention um and that is you know a general argument that is kind of found within kind of for Kodi and literature quite consistently right that like you know uh the emergence of surveillance as an instrument of Correction uh and discipline um is important parcel about a modernist project you know a pursuit of ever correction but correction contingent important parcel on surveillance um and so that journal kind of literature in itself is generally suspicious both of of not necessarily surveillance but of Correction right so like uh the the normative making of human behavior as a as the centrality um uh of say for kodian scholarship um and you know much of my own personal work in some sense is really interested in giving a genealogy of surveillance so you know it moving from effectively uh a place of you know uh social uh correction at least a means of social correction all the way to now where it's really at the center of kind of economic activity um obviously uh and the kind of the current age uh surveillance is is really about once again and you know public recordings wouldn't be surprised but how in some sense is really about training us on both how we how we understand our once but also how the system at least how the album can also help us discover our own wants and and so um and in that sense um surveillance has consistently functioned as um a way of correcting or at least socially intervening in the making of human uh behavior and activities uh the differences is that it kind of moved from the social to the more economical um um and so now we kind of really have to kind of take a more kind of critical inventory of how you know surveillance um in particular structures our economic activity and you know the you know there's a series of kind of plethora of examples um uh that now within some kind of I'd say more in the kind of economic anthropological literature that's really kind of interested in in how you know products like you know Siri or Amazon home uh or in a dialectical relationship between ourselves and the product and how in some sense you know us sharing our um our our wants and our tastes uh is in some sense training the product to train us on how to go about making consumption and so in some sense we're in a dialectical relationship between the product and ourselves um and that is you know Central um and you know the and then in in some sense trying to think more carefully about the proportionality of surveillance in the context of Africa you know um you know and I I probably should have maybe stressed this um ever more in my presentation you know uh uh you know for example you know the Kenyan government goes about procuring um huawei's uh kind of safe City product in 2014 and this is right after one of the largest kind of uh terrorist um kind of Acts in Kenya in 2013 um a very popular and kind of Highly commercial Mall uh was attacked by some you know an Islamic terrorist group they killed about uh 69 um people and so the government in some sense wanted to kind of expanded surveillance capabilities to really kind of keep track both of crime and Terror activities on the continent and so I mean in the country and you know and in kind of individual African countries have kind of have taken on surveillance really as an instrument to kind of correct for uh crime and Terror and so you know the activity of surveillance within that context seems warranted and I I bet that most particular people don't necessarily um Flinch at the idea of surveilling for the sake of public security um what I particularly point to is that uh these Ambitions of surveillance are actually not supporting public security but at the very least the surveillance systems that have been protruded thus far seem not to be supporting some of those Ambitions and so the the failure of those systems to me uh renders more interesting questions about uh the nature of the procurement of these systems well simultaneously uh the acts of unwarranted surveillance is really not connected to African governments rights but this course is usually saying China is doing downwards it's surveillance um uh and so in in that sense uh you know how one empirically establishes and warrants its surveillance from the party is is an at one level a mythological question at another level it's a part of kind of consistent speculative exercises within the policy realm to kind of justify you know uh General policy postures on the party um you know uh uh but you know that General kind of speculation I I consistently say it doesn't necessarily in any way negate uh uh local activities and wants so for example you know um some of my own personal work uh with you know kind of local local stakeholders here in Kenya has really been about uh bolstering cyber security capabilities uh and also privacy capabilities regardless of whether it is warranted and on warranted uh surveillance from uh other you know National actors um and and so you know attribution to me he seems to be uh the uh the linchpin of speculation but also really not necessary for kind of local actors who are interested in promoting uh privacy and civil liberties yeah no I really appreciate your uh your uh your presentation in in your uh answers uh and we have one final uh question here which I think speaks to uh the points that uh that you were uh engaging with uh right now uh on uh whether uh countries are afraid uh of uh uh Licking uh data uh to China uh using uh their uh surveillance tools I think that plays uh within uh well within the the broader set of concerns that we see uh internationally and with your presentation uh tends to share the more uh uh complex slides uh on uh just one brief point before I I leave it to you uh to uh to answer I I I I totally uh agree with your uh uh uh articulation of the question of of surveillance there in the in the light of of the panoptical of himself and the idea that surveillance doesn't need to be seen purely as a form of discipline but increasingly surveillance is also something that it becomes a necessity to enable autonomy as well to enable a development to enable people to organize their societies and and alter their uh their own uh lives and that increasingly this uh recursiveness this dialectic that you talk about between the individual and technology is also a dialectic between the public and the private and as we see the private increasingly the private realm the private domain increasingly acquiring power in ways that challenge National orders and and got the governance of our societies uh it's it's not possible to think that we can respond to these developments without developing at the same time capabilities uh to deal with that that entail some degree uh uh uh of acquisition of technological tools and and and and and and empowers uh to address uh challenges which are mounting uh challenges uh and which are just uh beginning but let me just uh defer uh to the point here and then we come back uh to the question uh uh and then we come back just to wrap up because we are a bit beyond uh our time uh would you like uh uh uh uh to uh answer uh this uh concern that has been expressed here that uh uh local uh uh companies and and countries may be afraid uh with the uh that their data may be may be leaked through the use of Chinese Technologies for sure for sure for sure you know this is a kind of a serious empowerment um issue um and there are you know some examples some in Africa that kind of uh greatly illustrate this point um a couple of years ago the African Union found you know bugs in some of the you know uh Cloud infrastructure that they procured uh both from Huawei and other kind of Chinese technological companies uh which directly pointed to you know a leakage uh of data flowing back directly to China and so um that point stands um the general issue is when um it moves Beyond from this one example to a presumption of kind of systematic kind of presumptions of consistent data leakages um and then from data leakages then connecting it to a presumption of uh coordinated if it's between kind of Chinese private firms and kind of the party States and so while you know much of my work in particular is interested in really establishing say you know African Coalition and local activities as relates to the the adoption of these systems you know I don't necessarily use sides of the fact that like some challenges do emerge from it and one and some of the challenges are at the level of Simply gaps locally wealth meeting some of the general challenges of you know uh of a cyber security nature and as I've already stated that like uh you know in addressing this General challenge attribution is not necessary uh but it is necessary uh in the realm of kind of uh foreign policy makers who are interested in how do we nicely then respond to you know a state who we believe to be systematic to surveilling others um you know whether it's systematic is um is something that does not necessarily empirically available to us thus far it might actually never be empirically available to us and so much of kind of both the intersection of both foreign policy but also kind of cyber uh really cyber strategy globally then needs to be able to act in the absence of attribution um and you know some of my own General Consulting work specifically with say you know American stakeholders within the space has been about well what does it look like to develop a foreign policy strategy and posture that doesn't necessarily uh um need attribution um and so yeah I'll leave it there unless the person is not satisfied you know we can further kind of excavate some of my responses excellent thank you so much we've benefited immensely from your presentation and discussion and thank you so much for joining us I'd like to thank as well the participants for uh for uh joining us and for uh sticking with us at you at the end and bullelani I really look forward to welcoming you to uh to Hong Kong and to continuing our conversation uh I wish you all the best in the continuation of your of your projects uh there in Kenya and I very much look forward to seeing you soon okay thank you so much thank you so much everybody have a great day you too bye bye thank you
2023-03-28