This is worrisome.
Prwmium times is reporting a matter of
public interest for Nigeria’s internet
users, and users of other kinds of
communication.
According to them, “The Jonathan
administration secretly, and in open
violation of lawful contracting
procedures, has awarded an Israeli firm,
elbit system, with headquarters in Haifa,
a $40million contract to help it spy on
citizens’ computers and Internet
communications under the guise of
intelligence gathering and national
security.”
Elbit announced the contract
award Wednesday in a global press
release but was silent on the
Nigerian destination of the
contract. Its general manager,
Yehuda Vered, opaquely
announced that “Elbit Systems will
supply its Wise Intelligence
Technology (WiT) system to an
unnamed country in Africa under a
new $40 million contract
announced on 24 April… for
Intelligence Analysis and Cyber
Defense,” but effusively claimed, in
the statement, that his company is
“proud to be selected to supply
this unique system, which is
already field-proven, fully
operational and customisable.
“Elbit Systems is a world leader in
the fields of intelligence analysis
and cyber defense, with proven
solutions highly suitable for
countries, armies and critical
infrastructure sites. We hope that
additional customers will follow in
selecting our highly advanced and
cutting edge systems in these
fields as their preferred solution,”
Mr. Vered added.
Multiple and very reliable sources
in the administration confirmed to
PREMIUM TIMES that Nigeria is
indeed the “unnamed African
country,” and with details from the
Elbit statement, our sources say
the contract will now help the
Jonathan administration access all
computers and read all email
correspondences of citizens in
what is clearly, an infringement on
constitutionally guaranteed
freedom of expression.
No single policy of this
administration has so far affected,
in one fell swoop, the lives of 47
million citizens, a third of the
Nigerian population and about four
times the number of voters who
brought the president to power two
years ago.
Nigerian netizens, the horde of
active citizens that use the
computer and Internet, are the 10th
in a global ranking that make them
27 per cent of Africa’s total Internet
users, far ahead of Egypt [19th
global ranking] and South Africa
[37th in global ranking].
The growth path of the Internet in
Nigeria has also been dramatic,
rising from a mere 200,000 Internet
users in 2002 to 47 million this
year, according to data from the
Global Internet user, one of the
Internet audit groups.
This development has not always
gladdened public officials in
Nigeria many who have expressed
open displeasure at the use of the
Internet by social media activists
and the power of its possibilities as
an empowering medium for popular
communication. The calls for
regulation have been loud in both
the administration and in the
Nigerian legislature.
The earliest hint that the Jonathan
administration had desires to
invade privacy of citizens surfaced
ealy April when researchers at the
Munk School for Global Affairs at
the University of Toronto alerted
the world that Nigeria, Egypt, and
Kenya were deploying Internet
surveillance and censorship
technology developed by an
American company, blue coat,
which specializes in online
security. Blue Coat’s technology
will allow the government to invade
the privacy of journalists, netizens
and their sources. Its censorship
devices use Deep Packet
Inspection, DPI, a technology
employed by many western
Internet Service Providers, to
manage network traffic and
suppress unwanted connections.
The DPI, it appears, “makes it possible
for censors to look into every single
Internet Protocol packet and subject it
to special treatment based on content
(censored or banned words) or type
(email, VoIP or BitTorrent Protocol).”
DPI not only threatens the principle
of Net Neutrality and the privacy of
users, civic groups say, it makes
single users identifiable and, in
countries that flout the rule of law
and violate human rights, often
exposes them to arbitrary
imprisonment, violence or even
torture.
While details on the Blue Coat
contract appears to have managed
to evade scrutiny up till this point,
PREMIUM TIMES sources say the
Elbit annunciation of the contract,
opaque as it was, terribly rattled
top administration officials – from
the presidency to the National
Security Adviser’s Office, and the
National Assembly.
“The presidency had wanted this
contract to be a top secret,” said
one of our sources. “The
presidency did not envisage that
Elbit was going to make it public.
Monitoring computers and Internet
use is a contentious issue and the
National Security Adviser had tried
to keep the contract secret.”
Elbit says it will take it two years to
complete the project, by which
time it claimed, the administration
will have “a highly advanced end-
to-end solution, [to] supports every
stage of the intelligence process,
including the collection of the data
from multiple sources, databases
and sensors, processing of the
information, supporting intelligence
personnel in the analysis and
evaluation of the information and
disseminating the intelligence to
the intended recipient…[that] will be
integrated with various data
sources, including Elbit Systems’
Open Source Intelligence (OSINT)
solution and Elbit Systems’ PC
Surveillance Systems (PSS), an
advance solution for covert
intelligence gathering.”
The administration had indicated in
the 2013 budget that it would
procure a Wise Intelligence
Network Harvest Analyzer System,
Open Source Internet Monitoring
System and Personal Internet
Surveillance System at a cost of
N9.496 Billion ($61.26 million).
Now that the contract has been
awarded to Elbit for about $
40million, it is unclear if the
National Assembly will raise
questions as to what becomes of
the extra $21million earmarked for
the project.
Investigations indicate that in
awarding the contract to the Israeli
firm, no tenders or calls for bids
were made just as there were no
public announcements. The
contract was awarded following a
proposal from a single vendor who
dictated the contract sum and the
terms of the contract.