On Monday May 25th Al Jazeera released an investigation that sent shockwaves through Kenyans online.
The documentary revealed how phones in the country had allegedly been turned into surveillance tools by the government.
According to the investigation, Kenya’s telecommunications giant Safaricom has been repeatedly implicated as an enabler of mass and government surveillance, providing security forces with access to citizens’ most private data through a process called triangulation.
Geolocation tracking, call records, M-Pesa transactions, WhatsApp messages, even intimate family conversations, allegedly flow from Safaricom’s servers to government security agencies, often without the judicial oversight required by law.
The case of David Mukaya brought these shadowy practices into the harsh light of a courtroom.
During his 2025 trial, a Safaricom officer made a stunning admission how he had handed over Mukaya’s location data and call records to security agencies without obtaining a court order.
The confession indicted the entire system.
Though Mukaya was ultimately acquitted, the admission confirmed what privacy advocates had been warning about for years. However, his case is just one thread in a larger tapestry of surveillance.
The Al Jazeera documentary paints a picture of a surveillance apparatus that operates in the shadows, using sophisticated spyware to infiltrate devices and monitor citizens who may never know they’re being watched.
Security forces, the investigation alleged, routinely bypass the legal requirements meant to protect Kenyans’ privacy, treating court orders as inconvenient obstacles in their unconstitutional activities.
Privacy advocates warn that this creates a climate of fear and self-censorship. Kenyans begin to watch what they say, even in private. They second-guess their words, their associations, their very thoughts and democracy withers in such soil.
