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Tsaone Basimanebotlhe did not expect security guards to show up to her home in a village outside Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, in July 2019, she told CPJ in a recent interview. . But they didn’t come to arrest or charge him, she recalls – they came looking for his devices, looking for the source of an article published by his employer, Mmegi newspaper.
Basimanebotlhe, a political journalist, said she returned her phone and password to officers after presenting a warrant and could not find her computer. A senior officer then used technology sold by Israeli company Cellebrite to extract and analyze thousands of his messages, call logs and emails, as well as his web browsing history, according to an affidavit from the medicine lab legal police. The affidavit, which CPJ reviewed, was submitted in a related court case.
“They are looking for people who leak information to the media,” Basimanebotlhe told CPJ.
Botswana police have also deployed Cellebrite technology to search for the phone of Oratile Dikologang, a local publisher indicted in 2020 over Facebook posts that alleged police violently questioned him about his sources, as CPJ reported. recently reported.
The use of powerful tools provided by private companies to search seized devices raises significant privacy and press freedom concerns. The experiences of Basimanebotlhe and Dikologang demonstrate that Botswana police use digital forensics equipment to scan large amounts of journalist communications from seized devices, whether or not they are charged with a crime. The extent of this research was only revealed when police documents were submitted to court months after the incident, and it is not known what happened to the data.
Botswana security forces regularly arrest journalists and take possession of their devices, CPJ has found. In March, Botswana police seized computers and phones of journalists and media workers arrested along with Moeladilotlhoko News Boiler, a private Facebook-based media outlet, recently documented CPJ; officers demanded their access codes, answered calls and read messages on devices, and kept two of the phones as evidence even after charges related to that arrest in April were withdrawn. David Baaitse, reporter for Botswana Weekend Message newspaper, separately told CPJ that intelligence operatives took phones belonging to him and his colleague for analysis six months after their arrest last year.
“If you pick up my phone and go analyze it, you have my files and everything, all my contacts,” Baaitse told CPJ in a recent interview. He added that such actions by security forces hamper journalists’ ability to gather information, saying: “Sources, they don’t trust us anymore. They no longer want to deal directly with us.
In the case of Basimanebotlhe, Mmegi reported that when his phone was first seized in July 2019, police were looking for evidence for their investigation into former intelligence chief Isaac Kgosi. Police claimed that Kgosi took photographs of undercover security officers, exposing their identities, and that these photographs were published by Mmegi in a February 2019 article, Basimanebotlhe said. The article, attributed to a staff journalist, was written by one of Basimanebotlhe’s colleagues, Mmegi clarified later.
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe (Mmegi / Thalefang Charles)
“They claimed I had pictures of people from the DIS,” Basimanebotlhe told CPJ, referring to an acronym for Botswana’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security Services. “They thought I was the one who wrote the story,” she said.
The affidavit detailing the forensic investigation of Basimanebotlhe’s devices was submitted during Kgosi’s lawsuit over the photographs, his attorney, Unoda Mack, told CPJ by telephone. He says police used Cellebrite’s Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED) and Physical Analyzer technology to retrieve and assess information from his phone, but found no evidence relevant to their investigation, according to CPJ’s review. Mack told CPJ that Kgosi had pleaded not guilty, and local media reported that a magistrate ultimately dismissed the charge of exposing the identity of the agents due to lack of evidence.
“They said they couldn’t find anything in my phone,” Basimaonebotlhe told CPJ. “[But] they went through my SMS, my WhatsApp [messages]. ”
CPJ contacted Botswana police spokesperson Dipheko Motube by phone about Basimaonebotlhe’s case and requested that questions be sent through the messaging app. He did not answer these questions and had previously declined to comment on the case involving Dikologang as it was still in court. Responding to questions about the Moeladilotlhoko News Boiler arrests, Motube told CPJ that the investigations “may require” detentions and the confiscation of “any instrument that may have been used in the commission of the offense” with “due regard to account of the rights of the arrested person ”. . ”
Reached by phone, Botswana government spokesman Batlhalefi Leagajang requested that questions about the alleged use of digital technology by security forces be sent by email. CPJ sent these questions, but received no response.
Cellebrite, which is owned by the Japanese company Sun Corporation, claims that its UFED toolkit can extract data from mobile phones, SIM cards and other devices even after the information is deleted, and its physical analyzer can examine the data. digital data. In April, the Nasdaq announced that Cellebrite would be publicly traded through a merger with TWC Tech Holdings II Corp., a US-based special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) designed to go public.
In response to questions from CPJ about the use of its technology in Botswana and human rights due diligence processes, Cellebrite provided a statement emailed through public relations firm Fusion that said she could not “talk about details” about her clients. Cellebrite “demands that agencies and governments using our technology adhere to the standards of international human rights law,” the statement said. “Our compliance solutions provide an audit trail and can discern who, when and how data was accessed, which leads to the accountability of agencies and organizations that use our tools,” the company added. Cellebrite did not directly respond to CPJ’s question about whether the company considered using its tools to find journalists’ devices acceptable.
Sun Corporation and TWC Tech Holdings II Corp. did not respond to questions emailed by CPJ about this article.
“[Police] want access to the data so they can find out the sources of these journalists, ”Dick Bayford, a Gaborone lawyer whose firm represented Basimanebotlhe and Baaitse, told CPJ in a recent interview. “He [has] a deterrent effect on press freedom.
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