THE NATION THURSDAY, MAY 23 2013
19
COMMENTARY FROM OTHER LANDS
EDITORIALS
Eavesdropping on Internet Communications
Home truth • Kwankwaso’s x-ray of the Boko Haram crisis calls for a complete overhaul of the northern system
G
OVERNOR Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso of Kano State hit the nail on the head when he declared dysfunctional youths from irresponsible parents create the nursery that feeds the Boko Haram insurrection. Speaking with visiting members of the Presidential Committee on Dialogue and Peaceful Resolution of Security Challenges in the North, the governor lamented the irresponsible conduct of some parents in the North who give birth to some 30 children, decide to take care of only two and unleash the rest of the pack on the society – with commercial-inclined states like Kano bearing much of the brunt. “They grow up to hate themselves,” the governor said of the children, “hate their parents, hate the leaders, hate the government and the society. They feel they are deprived, they feel injustice and they
‘For starters, the North needs to critically examine its pristine feudalism that tends to allocate resources on the basis of birth and class; and not on the basis of equitability. It is undemocratic and unjust to deny the nobility of their trove. But to reduce resentment that often drives violence bordering on anarchy, deliberate, veritable and verifiable efforts should be made to care for the not-soprivileged members of the society’
become enemies of the state and constituted authorities. They thereby become vulnerable to crime and violence.” The governor’s comment may well be a direct lift from the Boko Haram recruitment manual, if ever there was one! Coat this society bitterness with some selfserving dogma and you probably have an army of suicide bombers raring to go! In the colony of suicide bombers and sundry anarchists, therefore, you probably have a cadre convinced beyond any doubt – reasonable or unreasonable – that they must crush a society that thinks very little of crushing them. If the situation is as dire as the governor has painted – and with the violence and insecurity in the large swathe of the area, there is little doubt about that – then the governor’s alarm is nothing short of patriotic. In his x-ray, he has made for the root of the problem. But making for the root of the problem does not in any way suggest solving it is at hand. For starters, the North needs to critically examine its pristine feudalism that tends to allocate resources on the basis of birth and class; and not on the basis of equitability. It is undemocratic and unjust to deny the nobility of their trove. But to reduce resentment that often drives violence bordering on anarchy, deliberate, veritable and verifiable efforts should be made to care for the not-so-privileged members of the society. This the government can do with specific welfare programmes, targeted at the most vulnerable members of society. This can be done in areas of education, health and housing. Indeed, northern governments must collectively work on pan-northern free and
compulsory education. Going hand in hand with the feudal system is the abuse of the tenets of religion. About every religion preaches procreation as a divine order. Also, religions hint at divine providence, which simplistic logic is no more than that if God had divined procreation, God will provision for that procreation. That, of course, is permissible and legitimate within the ambit of faith. However, faith presupposes the inevitability of blessing after hard work. Unfortunately however, many abuse this natural order of things; and deliberately omit hard work from the belief and blessing chain. That would logically explain why parents would have more children than they can ever take care of – and spill this ill-bred band on society in the scary way Governor Kwankwaso recounted. In this long entrenched practice, there is no short cut. The solution, of tinkering the northern society, is long-term enlightenment, matched with mass education. But that would mean tougher war on corruption to free resources for this developmental challenge. That would be tough, given how endemic corruption is. But with will, it is not impossible. Also, religious organisations must be encouraged to teach faith with hard work; and not socialise their flock to some inevitable divine manna which failure often turns expectations into frustration, with devastating effect. Parents should also be enlightened on the imperative of having only children they can cater for; by demonstrating the grim consequences of irresponsible parental behaviours.
The police paradox •The sharp disparity in the compensations for fallen police and SSS men is a sad testament
T
HE paradox of the Nigeria Police Force is that it is the most important institution for maintaining peace and order, and even for the security of lives and property. It is indeed the inexorable steely arm of the judiciary which in tandem, keeps the society sane, safe and orderly. The police is arguably the most important organ of the modern state, yet in Nigeria, it is the least regarded. The Nigerian state carries on as if it could do without the police. In fact, the Federal Government, having shambled on fairly well without a proper police for so many years, today sees the police as an irritant only to be tolerated. Two recent incidents corroborate this mindset. Reports last Monday (which have not been refuted) show how families of men of the Department of State Services (DSS) who were killed on duty in the recent ambush in Nasarawa State were promptly handed an initial compensation of N10 million each, while the families of their police counterparts still awaited a paltry N500,000 compensation. The fallen State Security Service (SSS) men’s family members are also to enjoy a bequeathal of a befitting house each. The Inspector –General of Police, Mr. Mohammed Dikko Abubakar, was reported to be so aghast at the demeaning disparity in the compensation packages of the two services that he immediately increased his men’s take to N1 million. But there still remains a most demoralising difference. Another pointer to the status of the police in Nigeria is the rehabilitation work going on at the Police College, Ikeja, (PCI) Nigeria’s premier academy for the train-
ing of the force. The institute went to seed as a result of government’s indifference to the police in the first place; until January , PCI was unfit to be a pig sty and that is not an exaggeration. PCI was in such a scandalous state that when a television station reported its dereliction, it was an award-winning scoop of international magnitude. What was the Federal Government’s response after some days of huffing and puffing? It drafted the Nigerian Army Corps of Engineers to embark on the massive makeover of the police college, including the procurement of wardrobes, classroom desks and beds. This unthinking and blatant vote-of-noconfidence on the police establishment is not the most act of morale-killing ever meted out to the police, but it is quite significant with deep psychological imports. Ironically, the Federal Government is inadvertently abating the curse and damnation imposed on the police by the military hierarchy. Recent history shows that it was successive military governments that rendered the police impotent and almost worthless, to satisfy their dictatorial tendencies. At a point, the tag, ‘force’ was yanked off the Nigeria Police. That was the story of the police in Nigeria and the force’s troubles have not abated. No police unit would be allowed into a military barrack to do army work or contract. A military officer’s pay is miles apart from his police counterpart’s. A brigade commander’s office is a world apart from a divisional police officer’s office. When the police became so underfunded and crushed under the boots that it could not perform some of its basic
functions, successive federal government simply created other organs like the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC; the Federal Road Safety Commission, the National Security and Civil Defence Corps and even the WAI Brigade. When there is a breach of the peace that required the mobile police force, government mobilises military troops, on and on and the police as constituted today, is a damaged replica of the real thing. Again, we urge the Federal Government to borrow a leaf from some advanced countries of the world and restore the police to its status-quo ante. The police is a sacred institution of state that must be pristine in its very nature and be positioned as the bastion of any modern state. The police is not subordinate to the military class or even the political elite. The police is the state.
‘Again, we urge the Federal Government to borrow a leaf from some advanced countries of the world and restore the police to its status-quo ante. The police is a sacred institution of state that must be pristine in its very nature and be positioned as the bastion of any modern state. The police is not subordinate to the military class or even the political elite. The police is the state’
T
HE Federal Bureau of Investigation has a new plan to intercept Internet messages, calls and video chats. Instead of requiring companies like Skype and Google to build surveillance capabilities into their services as it suggested in 2010, the F.B.I. now proposes fining companies that fail to comply with court-ordered wiretaps. The new approach has met less opposition from other agencies, like the Commerce Department, than the earlier plan, which went nowhere because some officials worried that it would hurt innovation by imposing expensive and technically difficult requirements on start-up Internetbased communication services. Fines, some officials believe, would be less of a burden on new businesses because they might not have to worry about developing the ability to conduct wiretaps right away. The White House is evaluating the plan for submission to Congress. The F.B.I. has long complained that it is becoming ever harder to carry out courtapproved, real-time eavesdropping on criminal suspects since people are communicating without picking up a phone. The agency argues that the monitoring of Internet-based services does not expand government surveillance, but merely updates the current wiretap law. Judges would still have to authorize wiretaps, and would impose the fines if the services did not comply. But tech companies and advocates for greater privacy and security say the threat of fines would still force companies to build complex wiretapping capabilities into their services from the start (allowing wiretapping on peer-to-peer services like Skype will be particularly difficult). And they argue that opening systems to surveillance could make them vulnerable to hackers, a serious problem. Some experts say there are other ways to monitor suspects. A recent paper by four academics in the journal IEEE Security & Privacy argues that the government could get court orders to install software directly on the computers of suspects instead of going through Internet companies. The administration and Congress need to analyze carefully the F.B.I.’s proposal, details of which have not been made public. New rules will have to strike the right balance between privacy and cybersecurity and the government’s need to monitor criminal activity. • New York Times
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