Government of Sierra Leone’s Advanced Spectrum Monitoring System may violate privacy rights and carry risks that outweigh technical merits

Joseph Fitzgerald Kamara, Esq: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 03 November 2026:

The new Spectrum Monitoring System is being marketed as a technical fix. Cleaner airwaves, better call quality, and less interference. Agreed, these are laudable objectives. But a mobile spectrum monitor is also a direction finder. It can locate transmitters, and, by extension, broadcasters, sources, and critics.

That is where the real problem lies, not in the equipment itself, but in the legal environment surrounding it.

As a country, we still have no comprehensive data protection law in force and no independent privacy regulator.

The Cyber Security and Crime Act 2021 already permits real time traffic data collection and interception. Experience shows that the law has been used against journalists.

Furthermore, the National Security and Central Intelligence Act 2025 concentrates surveillance power under presidential authority, with weak judicial safeguards and no independent intelligence oversight.

When these powers converge, that is, locate a transmitter, identify a user, intercept communications; a regulatory tool easily becomes a surveillance tool.

Technical merits do not outweigh these risks until safeguards exist. Government should enact the Data Protection Bill and establish an independent regulator; require judicial warrants for any surveillance use; create parliamentary oversight with audit-log access; and make donor support conditional on these protections.

Better networks, yes. But not at the price of privacy, press freedom, and constitutional rights. Sierra Leoneans deserve both.