Mass surveillance program: NASS approves N4.87bn for NIA to monitor, track calls and WhatsApp messages

The National Assembly has reportedly approved N4.87bn for the National Intelligence Agency to track, intercept, monitor calls and messages on mobile devices like WhatsApp.

We’ll challenge this unlawful surveillance and blatant violation of Nigerians’ right to privacy, says SERAP on Monday.

Per Second News gathered that the program relies heavily on the “autonomous collection of massive data sets,” and analysis driven by artificial intelligence, according to countries that have the program in place.

WhatsApp recently in a statement in the U.S said, “The government cannot read personal messages on WhatsApp. No third parties except for the sender and the receiver of the messages can read the messages which get forwarded on WhatsApp.”

End-to-end encryption is intended as a way of ensuring that messages can only be read by the sender and their receiver.