Filmmakers Under Surveillance: How Kenya Used Spyware to Target Dissent
Two Kenyan documentary filmmakers have come under surveillance by state security services for their work on a film about youth-led protests. Digital forensics experts revealed that their phones had been infected with the spyware FlexiSPY while the devices were in police custody.
Brian Adagala and Nicholas Wambugu were arrested on May 2 on charges of spreading false information but released the following day. Their mobile phones, however, remained in the hands of authorities and were only returned on July 10. According to their lawyer, Ian Mutiso, it was during this period that the surveillance software was installed.
Experts from Citizen Lab assisted in the forensic analysis and confirmed the infection. While FlexiSPY is sold commercially and is easier to detect than the costly spyware tools typically employed by governments, its capabilities are no less invasive. It can intercept calls, track location, activate microphones for eavesdropping, and copy photographs, emails, and private messages.
The developers of FlexiSPY market it as a tool for parents and employers, designed to “know everything” about a device owner’s activities. Yet the software has already featured in major investigations. Notably, the Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán used FlexiSPY to monitor his mistresses, with intercepted messages later providing crucial evidence for the FBI’s case against him.
Although Adagala and Wambugu were never formally charged, their arrest and the subsequent compromise of their personal devices are widely regarded by lawyers and human rights advocates as an attack on freedom of expression. Their film, The People Shall, documents the struggle of Kenyan youth for democratic change—a narrative that appears to have displeased authorities amid growing crackdowns on opposition and public dissent.
The Kenyan Embassy declined to comment on the findings. Meanwhile, the filmmakers themselves describe the situation as absurd: the state, they argue, is now wielding the same intrusive tools once favored by criminal kingpins—only this time against journalists and directors.
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