The government plans to spend up to Sh6 billion to create what it describes as “a single source of personal information of all Kenyans and registered foreign residents in Kenya”. And even if you don’t give [your personal information] out, the govt will get it, somehow.”However, this is an inversion of the relationship described in the Constitution. The Constitution expressly asserts and protects both Kenyans’ rights to privacy and their right to information held by the state. As noted, the constitutional obligation is not on citizens but the state to provide the information that is the life’s blood of any democracy. So rather than demand even more of our personal data, government should first extract the log from its own eye.

Source: The Star February 21, 2019 20:15 UTC