The Technological Non-Solution

Last Thursday, I was invited for a rather swanky breakfast in Nairobi. The swankiness was not to do with the meal itself (it was the usual catered fare – eggs, pastries and breakfast meats), but with the location. Safaricom’s CEO Bob Collymore had asked editors and reporters to come over to the Capital Club for a briefing on the new system that Safaricom was designing and deploying for the government. The system, which will incorporate audio, video and data over a proprietary 4^th generation mobile network, is meant to give the police and other security officials the tools to be able to combat crime and terrorism, without being disadvantaged for lack of the proper tools.

These are nerve-shredding times in Kenya. Barely a week passes without reports of an explosion or shooting targeting the most quotidian of activities – riding on a bus, buying ‘mtumba’ clothes, worshipping in church. The issue with the attacks has not been how spectacular they are – many are not, but the constant, low-level drumbeat of Kenyans wounded and killed is leading to a feeling of despair, helplessness and rising anger.

This is even before you get to the even louder drumbeat of violent crime. This one is not in the background. This one’s in your face. It is in the nervousness present on everyone’s face when they’re going home after dark. It is in the fact that one can no longer wear ostentatious jewellery, or speak on a mobile phone, in many parts of our towns and cities. It is in the stories of people maimed and killed for the most senseless of reasons, by thugs who are so nihilistic that they make a mockery of the value of human life.

The new technology system unveiled on Thursday (and the story of whose acquisition had been broken by the Daily Nation the day before) is supposed to start bringing a sense of control to the police when they are trying to tackle these twin perils. It is a sophisticated system, on a par with those deployed by the New York Police Department and the Metropolitan Police in London. It relies on an array of cameras (both standard and infra-red); police walkie-talkies that are a combination of smartphones and police radios; and a control system that gives a Big-Brother-Eye-View of the different nodes and components. It is designed, for instance, to ping a police officer when he or she wanders beyond their designated patrol zone. It can send live video back to HQ, and between handsets, so that controllers can get timely information about a particular incident to deploy the right assets.

It is all, for the most part, reassuring, from the technological point of view. Who wouldn’t rest easy knowing that, even down a dark alley, miscreants can be seen clear as day using the infra-red cameras (their placement will remain a closely-guarded secret)? Who would not relax a little knowing that the system has the capacity for facial and number-plate recognition?

But all these, ultimately, are sops, if the most important element is not sorted out. The human element is what will make this system work, or die before it is even born. Hundreds of police officers will be trained to use the system, and will also become ‘trainers of trainers’, but unless the proper questions are asked and answered, then the system will simply become a stupendously expensive boondoggle.

Take for instance the question I asked the Inspector General of Police. Earlier in the week, he had issued his now-infamous edict about vehicles with tinted windows (and which had spawned an uproar online and offline). To my mind, it was a simple problem. The IG had made a rather ambiguous statement (which a quick glance at the relevant law would have clarified), but he was now too proud, or too embarrassed, to walk it back. So when I asked him to make a simple clarification on camera, he obfuscated the matter even further (which is why you had the Law Society and the government’s different Twitter accounts making duelling legal claims).

Put that together with the infamous police raids in Eastleigh and South C. They became (or were designed to be) such blunt instruments as to be worse than useless. Not only did they, for the most part, not catch very many terrorists, but they actively alienated the very segments of the population that are needed to combat the menace.

Neither of these issues; or the need for visible policing at potentially high crime areas; or the simple need to ensure that no police officer patrols alone (he becomes an easy target for a gang who would want to steal his firearm) needed a technological solution. Community policing (not the buzzword, but the ability for police officers to know and be known in their patrol areas) is a stalled concept. I find it interesting that I know every County parking attendant and parking assistant (the young men who’ll busily show you where to put your car) around Nation Centre, but not a single police officer. Thus, if my side mirror is stolen, or I see a potential terrorist, I’m most likely to report it to a former streetboy than I am to a cop.

And that’s something no number of fancy breakfasts will take away.

Also published in the Business Daily on 20 May 2014 at http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Opinion-and-Analysis/Technology-alone-will-not-pull-down-insecurity-hurdle/-/539548/2320360/-/teglxiz/-/index.html