How to undo surveillance

Inside: Libya's ITU bid

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CybAfrique Media
May 23, 2026

CybAfriqué is a space for news and analysis on cyber, data, and information security on the African continent.

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How to undo surveillance

In 2018, the Mauritian parliament quietly passed an amendment that criminalized free speech. Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth and his Militant Socialist Movement (MSM), who had inherited power from his father Anerood Jugnauth a year earlier without an election, pushed through revisions to the Information and Communication Technologies Act (ICT Act) that made it a criminal offence to post online content deemed to cause "inconvenience, distress, or anxiety" — punishable by up to ten years in prison. This is widely considered the beginning of Mauritius' brief descent into state-sanctioned digital surveillance. The government used the ICT Act to target free speech and dissent, with journalists and ordinary citizens arrested for posts deemed critical of the ruling regime. In the background, the government was building something far more ambitious. Starting from 2017, when Jugnauth first assumed office, a mass surveillance system, later identified as PertSol, supplied and maintained by a Dubai-based company, was deployed to intercept phone calls, internet traffic, and social media communications, including WhatsApp, Signal, Facebook, TikTok, and email. It operated, according to subsequent investigations, without judicial oversight of any kind.

In 2024, as Mauritius approached its general election, audio recordings of private conversations started circulating online, involving senior politicians, the police commissioner, ministers, journalists, civil society leaders, and foreign diplomats. The recordings had allegedly been obtained through illegal wiretapping. Numerous conversations of journalists, opposition figures, and foreign diplomats were leaked. Jugnauth's office claimed the recordings had been manipulated using artificial intelligence; affected journalists said the calls were authentic, with one alleging the AI claim was a deliberate attempt to deflect from the scandal's fallout. In the final days of October, the government shut down access to major social media platforms, instructing telecommunications providers to block them, with the ban intended to last until after the November 11 election. The shutdown led to surging demand for VPN services and widespread public fury. Bodies like Access Now's The #KeepItOn coalition and the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) condemned the move as a gross violation of national and international human rights frameworks and demanded an immediate reversal, which led the government to rescind the ban after just 24 hours, citing consultations with relevant authorities.

The ruling party lost the election to the opposition Alliance of Change, who won 60 of 62 contested seats in parliament, a near-total sweep.

Since then, the new government under Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam has staked its credibility on dismantling the surveillance system the previous administration built. Ramgoolam revealed to parliament that he had halted the mass surveillance system and ordered the equipment deactivated. He described it as reminiscent of totalitarian regimes and estimated its cost at $110 million USD, funds he argued should have gone to health and education. He also alleged that following the MSM's election loss, members of the outgoing government had deliberately destroyed evidence, shredding hard drives and formatting servers, though cybersecurity experts reportedly recovered enough data to identify those responsible. That same month, in February 2025, former Prime Minister Jugnauth was arrested by the Financial Crimes Commission on money laundering charges, after investigators seized suitcases of cash and luxury watches from locations including his home.

More recently, the government confirmed the full scope of what had been deployed. The mass surveillance system wasn't just PertSol. Investigative reporting has separately established that the Jugnauth government acquired tools from Verint, an Israeli company with ties to former state intelligence operatives, which connected directly into the Mauritius Telecom network at four sites across the country, enabling speech analytics and comprehensive communications interception. And it goes further: Mauritius is among the 25 countries identified by Citizen Lab researchers as clients of Circles, an Israeli surveillance firm affiliated with NSO Group that exploits vulnerabilities in Signalling System No. 7 (SS7), the aging protocol that underpins global mobile call routing — to intercept calls, texts, and location data without any visible trace on the target's device. Unlike Pegasus, which requires installing spyware on a phone, Circles requires only access to the SS7 network, making it nearly impossible for targets to detect. When NSO Group and Circles were brought under common ownership, it became likely the relationship deepened, potentially giving Mauritius access to Pegasus-level capabilities as well. Some have raised the question of whether access to this infrastructure persisted even after the MSM exited office, a concern that is difficult to dismiss given how thoroughly the outgoing government attempted to destroy evidence of the system's existence.

Dismantling surveillance is harder than building it. A new government can deactivate equipment, make parliament speeches, and arrest its predecessor. What it cannot easily do is recover the data already collected, fully account for what was shared with whom, or guarantee that the relationships with surveillance vendors, companies whose entire business model depends on discretion, were cleanly severed.  

Libya’s bid for the ITU council

This week, Libya announced its interest for membership on the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Council for the 2027–2030 term. The candidacy was  disclosed during a diplomatic reception in Geneva, held on the sidelines of the ITU Council’s 2026 meetings, attended by Secretary-General Doreen Bogdan-Martin and international delegations.

The council seats 43 people, 13 of which are allocated to African countries. These 13 are typically decided via the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), which also operates a regional quota-based allocation system The ITU decides global telecommunications standards and who gets it matter. Western countries, for example, often push for interoperability across their established infrastructures, which prioritizes standards, openness, and security, but also strengthen their private players who operate these systems. Global South countries, however, prioritize access even if it means lower standards, and attempt at sovereignty, even though it often interferes with cost and interoperability, including with different African countries. 

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