Mahama warns online abusers: “We can find you through your IP”
President John Dramani Mahama has warned that the state will crack down on individuals using the internet to spread hate speech and incite violence, disclosing that the National Signals Bureau (NSB) has been empowered with new tracking technology.
“The National Signals Bureau now has the technology to use your IP number and find you wherever you are,” Mahama said on Wednesday (10 September) during his engagement with the media at Jubliee House.
He cautioned Ghanaians who engage in online abuse that they will be traced and prosecuted under Ghana’s criminal laws.
“So I’m sending a signal to Ghanaians that we can find you, you doing those hate speech and things. We’ll use your IP number, we’ll trace you. And when we trace you, we’ll deal with you under the criminal code for inciting violence and disturbance of the peace,” he warned.
Mahama added that the NSB has been given “the full authority to track down people who do that kind of thing and bring them to be sanctioned under the criminal code.”
He also raised concern about the role of social media in fuelling ethnic conflicts, particularly in Bawku and the Gonja area.
“If you go to some of the WhatsApp platforms, or you go to some of the commentaries on TikTok, we have what we call hate speech, incitement to violence. Those are criminal. Because if we don’t regulate that sector, it can lead this nation to war,” he said.
He added that regulation is needed for “emerging new media”, stressing: “Anybody just takes a phone and says, ‘this plane crash, I wish that so-and-so had been the one in the helicopter and had died and dwarfs have eaten him in the forest.’ Why would you say something like that?”
