Project Draw the Curtain

Achieving online inclusion by implementing data movement alert and empowering data subjects to have access to their online data. 

By 2007, online users in Africa were basically sceptical about identifying themselves online because of data security breaches leading to hoax emails, loss of money or impersonation. Today,  in Nigeria, mobile phone  penetration has risen to 84%. This adoption is driven by the following factors: availability of cheaper smart phones, per second billing for data access, engaging and convenient digital products and services. These services leverage on the dual business model of digital and physical models to deliver services to consumers such as education apps, quick and cheap messaging apps like whatsapp to mention a few. 

The challenges for businesses and consumers in Africa while online include:

- Uncertainties about the identity of parties to a transaction

-  How to prevent unpermitted activity.

- The feeling of baring all in the public without any Data Protection Law to protect the consumer. 

- How to stop the trend of deliberate transfer of personal information by data controllers and processors for economic gains without permission or trail. 

- Religious reasons.

Whichever is the case, what is obtainable now is that data subjects rely on companies’ privacy policies for their protection. For the lack of trust, they use unverifiable identities online or refuse to be included online. When transparency is established, parties and entities that were discouraged will have a good basis to join hence ensuring digital inclusion and creation of wealth.

In response to these needs, we are developing an educational mobile app for children from ages 3 - 12. This app will collect personal data for subscription but will be embedded with the block-chain technology to establish transparency through shared ledger, available to permitted members of the network and encrypted end to end to protect users' digital footprint. The system will also implement movement alert, using the Intrusion Detection System, to inform users when their data leaves the network.

This way, a user is assured that though they are identifiable online, they have the control over the use to which that personal information they submit will be put to without going through the process of reporting. If users know that they will have access to their data, can trail their transactions and be empowered to know the movement of their personal identifiable information, they will be more comfortable to give verifiable information about themselves.

Our technology is a new process of providing privacy and security to users data by giving data subjects access to the network where their information is stored. Thus, if the data leaves that network, data subjects can trail that activity through a secured recording system and either request to be deleted or have their subscription stopped.

Our solution is innovative because it implements blockchain technology in a mobile phone application and utilises the Intrusion Detection System (IDS) for an added layer of security, to empower users to draw their curtain while online. 

The system will implement the following features:

a. The use of consensus algorithms  to validate and authorise transactions. 

b. Advanced encryption along with permissions which will ensure privacy on the network; preventing unauthorised access to transaction details and deterring fraudulent activity.

 The decentralised nature of distributed ledgers and blockchains can give people more proactive control over their data and make it more difficult for unauthorised users to exploit it. Taking into consideration the importance of securing users’ information and giving them control over their data, we developed our app's architecture with these core features. Every other feature revolves around them. When a user signs up, a block chain public key is generated for the user and before any  user’s data is to be used for any purpose, the user is notified to choose whether to allow the data to be used or not. The data can be monitored in a public ledger that will give users the power to request for a stop to the use of their data. 

Our mobile app qualifies as a digital identification system as much as the permanent voters' card in Nigeria since users will have to submit their data; be authenticated and validated before subscribing to the service. Hence, once we get the system to run on our mobile app, we can apply it on other digital identification systems. Our app utilises Distributed Ledger Technology and can help with the process of customer identity verification by using asymmetric cryptography, hashing codes (as “digital fingerprint”), time-stamping and consensus to achieve a simplified verification procedure that can be specifically attributed to the correct individual, or entity engaging with the app.

 This mobile app will be hosted on a network that is set up as a members' only club and can be downloaded on any system that is connected to the Internet. Every participant will be issued a unique identity and the participants must meet certain criteria to conduct transactions. 

Our app employs the use of visually appealing graphics to deliver a super-interactive user interface (UI) that will guide the user through its navigations and functions seamlessly. Through the use of engagement features such as surveys and close observation of online behaviour of users, we developed personas from which our UI development was built. 

We have been working extensively to develop a comprehensive framework for creating and publishing RESTful API architecture. This framework enables us to develop APIs for any use, case and workflow.

Interoperability rests on the foundation that data transferred between entities have not been altered or tampered. So our system utilises the cryptographic hash functions and extends its function to the application of Distributed Ledger Technology and Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI). With this, users can validate and authenticate the data transmitted, stored, and received.

Processes such as the IDS are built into our application framework to monitor and regulate the state of the communications link. These processes which can work online or offline are used to discern the quality and reliability of the connection. A supervisory process is embedded to make decisions based on those qualities and reliability metrics to utilise the apps caching capacity as a local data store that is persistent between sessions and synced when there is sufficient connectivity.  The app only sends back minimal amount of data and also keeps a copy of everything necessary to the user offline.

Our vision for the next three to five years includes:

1. To develop additional relevant content that will engage people in different demographic groups. 

2. To collaborate with thriving content development businesses who serve people in the low literacy demographics and senior citizens to integrate the system into their apps. 

I am currently working as a freelance lawyer and researcher. My team members are graduate developers currently on their youth service to the nation.

I have thinking, research and writing skills. I have demonstrated my research and writing skills by winning the 2009 International Telecommunication Union essay competition titled, 'Personal information online; responding to users privacy concerns'. My team members are developers and designers. They run an incubation hub that was selected at the 2018 'Techfest' event organised by Diamond Bank, Nigeria. With the research, writing, thinking, developing and designing skills, we will attract the resources needed to develop our solution.

We plan to sell through: 

Sale to Value Added Service(VAS) providers- Recently, the Nigerian Communication Commission licenced VAS providers who will sell content to data subscribers in Nigeria. We will sell our apps to the VAS providers who will sell to subscribers on a pay as you go basis.

Subscription- We will offer users yearly, quarterly or monthly subscription plans for a fee.

Freemium services- We will offer users a functional, basic and full free version of our product, we hope that this will persuade them to become regular when we provide them with feature-rich version for a fee.

We will partner with subsisting content developing businesses and government bodies that manage identity to embed our solution to their system. The interoperability of our solution will ensure that we reach different demographic groups including the old, the non-tech savvy, the young, etc. The essence of our partnership is to ensure a wide outreach thus positioning us for better profitability and long term sustainability. 

Achieving privacy online, which  is like 'drawing your curtain' physically, is a dream we want to achieve. There are lapses in law as a tool to protect privacy of users online especially because of the changing pace of technology. 

In Nigeria where there is no law to protect privacy online, participating in this challenge will empower us financially to achieve a product that will solve a global concern which will be adapted to suit the special circumstances of paucity of law and deep penetration of the use of mobile phones.

Availability of funds is a key barrier to the success of our solution. Obtaining grants from national and international donors, from other external sources and also applying for competitions are necessary measures to overcome this barrier. 

Another key barrier is the issue of acceptability and implementation of our solution. This barrier can be broken through creating awareness at tech events, education fairs, school open days, publications in newspapers, social media and policy advocacy.