An analysis of Social Media use in The SADC region - 2014 - 2020 commercial market for social media surveillance142 has lowered the cost of entry not only for the security services, where it is being used with little oversight or accountability.143 This growing employment of social media surveillance threatens to squeeze the space for freedom of expression and access to information, including civic activism on social media. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have opened up new possibilities for automated mass surveillance.144 Advanced monitoring systems145 are able to map users’ relationships through link analysis; attribute meaning to their social media posts using natural-language processing and sentiment analysis146; and infer their past, present, or future locations. Whether accurate or inaccurate147, the conclusions made about an individual can have serious repercussions, particularly in countries148 where one’s political views and social interactions can lead to closer scrutiny and outright punishment149. Zambia, South Africa and Mozambique are examples of countries in the region that have been identified in 2018 as part of the 45 countries that were using and/or targeted for spying and tracking using the NSO Group’s Pegasus150 Spyware.151. Social media risk152 : Government attitudes Social media threats and risk commonly refers to any risk of financial loss, disruption or damage to the reputation on, through or based on social media. The risk could materialize in a variety of ways, such as: deliberate and unauthorized breaches of security to gain access to information systems, fake news, unintentional or accidental breaches of security and poor system integrity. Governments within the region have identified and made public pronouncements on social media risk(s), though some of the estimates are not in alignment with international best practices and standards for digital rights, for example: Social media risk identification - Case of Angola The President of Angola in an opening speech of the Angotic 2018153highlighted that “Social networks, which have come to facilitate quick communication between people and whose use, especially by young people, we encourage and discourage, also hide some dangers, due to the possibility that authors and 142 Ibid definition 84 above 143 ibid 144 https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/17/global-expansion-of-ai-surveillance-pub-79847 145 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090447914000550 146 https://monkeylearn.com/sentiment-analysis/ 147 https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/09/17/global-expansion-of-ai-surveillance-pub-79847 148 https://carnegieendowment.org/publications/interactive/ai-surveillance 149 ibid 150 Israel-based “Cyber Warfare” vendor NSO Group produces and sells a mobile phone spyware suite called Pegasus. To monitor a target, a government operator of Pegasus must convince the target to click on a specially crafted exploit link, which, when clicked, delivers a chain of zero-day exploits to penetrate security features on the phone and installs Pegasus without the user’s knowledge or permission. Once the phone is exploited and Pegasus is installed, it begins contacting the operator’s command and control (C&C) servers to receive and execute operators’ commands, and send back the target’s private data, including passwords, contact lists, calendar events, text messages, and live voice calls from popular mobile messaging apps. The operator can even turn on the phone’s camera and microphone to capture activity in the phone’s vicinity. See: https://citizenlab.ca/2018/09/hide-and-seek-tracking-nso-groups-pegasus-spyware-to-operations-in-45-countries/ 151 https://citizenlab.ca/2018/09/hide-and-seek-tracking-nso-groups-pegasus-spyware-to-operations-in-45-countries/ 152 https://www.rswebsols.com/tutorials/internet/privacy-security-risks-social-media 153 President Angola João Lourenço, in the opening speech of the Angotic 2018 forum, which takes place in Luanda, dedicated to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). 28 https://zimbabwe.misa.org