Police in Uganda plan to use WhatsApp groups to fight crime in the capital, Kampala, the force’s Chief Political Commissar Asan Kasingye is quoted by the Monitor newspaper as saying.
The move will do little to avert what independent watchdog Freedom House calls the “strong sense that surveillance has expanded in recent years” in Uganda. Earlier this year the government was forced to deny claims it hacked into opposition MP Bobi Wine’s WhatsApp chat group.
Under the police’s proposed scheme residents would be added to groups on the messaging platforms where they can report crimes to local officials, cutting the “response time”.
At least 30 homes and factories have been raided by armed gangs in Kampala and its outskirts in recent weeks, the Monitor reports.
Hotels, guest houses and lodges have also been ordered to share information on their guests on a daily basis. “You will make sure hoteliers register people every morning and take that list to the nearest station so that the intelligence can make something out of that,” Mr Kasingye is reported as saying.
The information, Mr Kasingye added, will be used by intelligence agencies “for proper documentation of individuals hosted in a given community, where they came from and their next destination”.