Laws address ‘outside actors'

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta has signed the Data Protection Bill following several years of debate and delays. The new law places restrictions on the collection and use of digital data by governments and private corporations and are similar to those included in a data protection Bill recently passed in Nigeria. In a Mail & Guardian analysis, Brian Ekdale and Melissa Tullylaws say the new laws are welcome advancements in the light of investigations that revealed that UK political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had worked on ‘dubious’ presidential campaigns in both countries. ‘It’s been widely known for some time that the firm helped elect Donald Trump in the US and worked on the Brexit referendum in the UK. An ongoing leak of tens of thousands of internal documents is set to show in great detail Cambridge Analytica’s work in 68 countries around the world. The legal responses to the revelations suggest a growing awareness that social media and personal data are being harnessed by outside actors to influence elections around the world,’ they note.