New order: State given powers to snoop into cell phones

The CS will have to seek the court's permission before searching your phone [Photo: Shutterstock]

President Uhuru Kenyatta has passed into law an omnibus Bill that had initially proposed to give the Interior Cabinet Secretary sweeping powers to access mobile phone data from any individual suspected of being a spy for a foreign power without a court warrant. But in the new Statute Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill, 2020, the CS will have to seek the court's permission before searching your phone.

Yesterday, the president also signed into law the new Sectional Properties Act, 2019 that provides for the division of buildings into units to be owned by individual proprietors. It repeals the Sectional Properties Act of 1987. In his State of the Nation address last month, President Kenyatta said this was one of the reforms that would “bring legal clarity to the ownership of sectional properties.”