Sam Nartey George, the representative for Ningo Prampram, claims that the ongoing nationwide SIM card registration initiative is being used to steal personal information from Ghanaians.
He claims there is proof that without their knowledge, Ghanaian citizens’ Ghana Card information is being exploited to register SIMS cards that are not their own.
The MP stated in a Facebook post published on Thursday, April 4, 2023, that the National Communication Authority (NCA) has stated it is developing a short code for Ghanaians to check the amount of SIM cards their data has been used to register.
This announcement was made in response to the data breach affecting Ghanaians. In a Facebook sighted by Tru News Report, the NDC stalwart wrote;
“We are in a crisis! There is widespread evidence that there are multiple breaches of citizens’ personal data during the SIM card registration exercise. This a grave issue in any serious jurisdiction. Do not forget that I had raised this issue on the 17th of October 2022 and the response from the National Communications Authority Ghana was that they were doing mystery shopping.
Today, the Director of Legal at the Regulator is not telling us steps taken to check the extent of the breach but is shifting responsibility to citizens to wait for an app to check if they have suffered a breach? Good graces! How low have we sunk as a Nation. The following should be the crisis mitigation steps;
1. The NCA should immediately halt any further registration and conduct a thorough investigation of registration records to determine how many SIMs have been registered with each unique Ghana Card number.
2. They should then send messages to the primary number associated with each Ghana Card notifying the holder of the number of SIMs registered.
3. Where there is an issue of unauthorised registration using the Ghana Card, the customer is then given a chance to raise a complaint and the Data Protection Commission Ghana is immediately activated to determine the challenges with whichever Data Processor was involved and remedial steps taken including compensation and punitive action on the Data Processor.
4. Based on the findings of the DPC and NCA, criminal charges for identity theft and Data breaches would be brought against the persons or entities involved in the identity theft.
This is what a functional system should commence immediately as a triage of this process which is necessary and commendable but which has been messed up from the get go by poor public policy planning.
Let him or her who has ears listen! 🦁🇬🇭”
