Last month, the Kenya Parliament passed a seriously concerning amendment to the country’s national ID law, making Kenya home to the most privacy-invasive national ID system in the world. The rebranded, National Integrated Identity Management System (NIIMS) now requires all Kenyans, immigrants, and refugees to turn over their DNA, GPS coordinates of their residential address, retina scans, iris pattern, voice waves, and earlobe geometry before being issued critical identification documents. NIIMS will consolidate information contained in other government agency databases and generate a unique identification number known as Huduma Namba.
It is hard to see how this system comports with the right to privacy articulated in Article 31 of the Kenyan Constitution. It is deeply troubling that these amendments passed without public debate, and were approved even as a data protection bill which would designate DNA and biometrics as sensitive data is pending.
Read further: https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2019/02/08/kenya-government-mandates-dna-linked-national-id-without-data-protection-law/