Information security in Chad .. Confronting crime and terrorism or protecting the system?

Fadel Abdel Razek-N'Djamena

People in the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, who lost their mobile phones, used to go to various police departments to report their missing phones.

The capacity and capacity of the police to solve the problems of whistle-blowers on their lost phones have improved, and they now have technology that enables them to track cell phones.

Once the police is provided with a phone number that was previously used on the lost phone, it can, in cooperation with the telecommunications companies, know the location of the phone and who is using it.

The government increased the efficiency of other institutions to collect data electronically. The Minister of Defense and Security Mohamed Aba Salah supervised the launch of a new passport last month, in which he confirmed that all the procedures required to secure the data had been observed.

Protecting citizens ’personal information and data, and tracking criminals’ information and information about them are matters of increasing importance for the Chadian government, stressing that the primary goal is to combat organized crime, whether by preventing criminals from stealing or falsifying information, or identifying the identities of perpetrators of crime who use any technology from Chad.

Increased risk
Chad is now facing Boko Haram militants in Lake Chad, which is the target of other armed organizations in the region, and the Chadian government has vowed to respond to it because it attacks its positions in Mali and other regions.

To this end, the government created the National Information Security and Electronic Documentation Agency, which actually began operating in 2018, three years after parliament passed the law establishing the agency.

But the government, whose opponents describe as unable to implement the laws that called for its enactment, is accused by the opposition of only working to create a new institution and will not provide anything beneficial to citizens and their security.

In an interview singled out by the Director General of the Al-Jazeera Agency, Mohamed Awar Naisa explained to us the main mission of the new institution, saying that they employed Chadian experts who were trained in a number of countries such as Japan, South Africa, France and the United States, and they will work on legislating and proposing technical measures for the government to protect citizens ’personal data from Exploited illegally.

To achieve this goal, Naysa explains that a data center has been established in Chad whose mission is to collect and store data locally, because a local data center is not available to store citizens ’personal data such as those related to health or identities, which puts the security of this information at risk, as the option available so far is Save them abroad only.

The second task, according to the director of the National Agency for Information Security and Electronic Documentation, is to combat cybercrime, as the agency has created a section dedicated to following up on these crimes, which includes specialists from the judiciary, communications and the police.

However, the head of the National Union for Democracy and Renewal, Saleh Kabzabo, does not trust the actions of the institution, and Kabzabo - the parliamentary and rival deputy to President Idriss Deby in the last presidential elections - said that the government did not provide any information to the public about its new project, which issued surveillance cameras in the intersections. Main in the capital.

Suppressing opponents
Kabzabo believes that the project falls within the framework of the government’s repression of freedoms, and this time it targets the demonstrations that erupt in the streets by photographing the participants and knowing their identities, not intended to combat crimes.

Saleh Kabzabo said in an interview with Al-Jazeera that President Deby, in seeking to obtain information to prove his rule and suppress his opponents, established a secret relationship with the Israeli security services before this relationship took on an official character, culminating in the normalization of relations at the beginning of 1019.

The goal of Chad establishing a relationship with Israel, says Kabzabo, is for Tel Aviv to provide Chad with electronic devices and experts to eavesdrop on opponents' calls and penetrate their contacts and records of their personal data, considering that all that was included in the agreement has one goal is to provide protection and continuity to the president's rule.

However, the director of the National Information Security and Electronic Documentation Agency denied Kabzabo's talk about the government's use of Israelis to infiltrate citizens' data and eavesdrop on them, and said that his administration is ready to receive the opposition as a kazabo or any other person to present what it has in this regard.

He considered that the agency is working with complete impartiality and is ready even to deliver the matter to foreign expertise houses if the local experts are unable to deal with the matter, because the law in Chad - according to him - protects personal information, indicating that the state has mandated them to provide everything necessary in this regard.