ZEC must be sued for data privacy breach

Election watchdog Team Pachedu has called on citizens of Zimbabwe to sue the Zimbabwe Electoral Commmision (ZEC) for violating the Data Protection Act by sharing subscriber database to third parties.

The sentiments comes after thousands of Zimbabweans received  received unsolicited ZANU-PF messages including those in new constituencies raising concerns over the security of people’s data held by public bodies and the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission(ZEC) in particular.

The ZEC is one of the public bodies in charge of one of the biggest databases containing people’s personal data and concerns have been raised about the electoral body  giving away private citizens’ information to ZANU PF in particular .

“ZEC must be sued for violating the Data Protection Act by sharing phone records with ZANU-PF.ZEC and ZANU-PF must not be allowed to break our laws wantonly,”Team Pachedu said.

The Data and Protection Act prohibits the transmission of unsolicited messages making the move illegal altogether

The use of Bulk SMS services is not a new phenomenon in Zimbabwe; however, the problem with the SMSs sent out by ZANU-PF is that they were specific to the name and location of each registered voter.

In other words, ZANU-PF had to have access to a database that contained people’s names, their mobile numbers, and constituency information in other words, voters’ personal data.