Kenya Police Put Spyware on Detained Filmmakers’ Phones: CPJ

Kenyan filmmakers detained by police allegedly had spyware installed on their phones, a press freedom group said Wednesday, saying it was “gravely alarmed” by the move. Four independent filmmakers — Nicholas Wambugu Gichuki, Bryan Adagala, Mark Karubiu and Chris Wamae — were arrested on May 2 in capital Nairobi and charged with “publishing false information”. The men were released a day later without charge, but their devices — including their phones, hard drives and laptops — were kept by police until July 10. The Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) quoted a researcher at Toronto University’s Citizen Lab, which tracks digital threats against civil society, who said spyware had been installed on devices belonging to two of the detained reporters. Such software would give “the operators silent, secret access to all sorts of private business and information about their journalism” the senior researcher told CPJ. AFP