EXPOSED: Gov’t Building Sophisticated Tech-Enabled Spying System Using High-Tech Traffic Surveillance to Spy on opposition and Crash Dissent

In a startling revelation that cuts to the heart of Uganda’s fragile democracy, opposition and cyber security experts has revealed how the government’s Intelligent Transport Monitoring System (ITMS), widely marketed as a breakthrough in traffic safety, is quietly doubling as a future powerful surveillance machine aimed directly at the political opposition.

Opposition and cyber security experts believe that ITMS is not just about stopping reckless drivers , it’s a sophisticated surveillance web hiding in plain sight.

Since 2019, Kampala and other major urban centers have been blanketed with over 5,000 high-resolution CCTV cameras under the Safe City Project, developed with technical support from Chinese telecom giant Huawei.

Touted as a public safety initiative, the system includes license plate recognition, facial identification, and real-time analytics. But sources inside the system say the real intent stretches far beyond public safety.

“They can track a car from one side of the country to another and identify who was inside it,” one former IT subcontractor told us. “They know when you leave your home, where you meet, how long you stayed even who you were next to.”

Opposition parties, particularly the National Unity Platform (NUP), have long suspected they were being watched. What they didn’t know was just how deep the digital rabbit hole went.

Several campaign aides noticed a disturbing pattern: police often intercepted motorcades in remote locations with uncanny precision, sometimes within minutes of departure. It turns out this wasn’t luck or informants it was ITMS.

The system’s automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) capability flags and logs vehicles of interest, allowing their movements to be monitored live across multiple districts. If a convoy of opposition members hits the road, the system lights up. Every intersection becomes a checkpoint, every camera a silent informant.

But the surveillance doesn’t stop at vehicles. Sources reveal that data from ITMS is being combined with phone location metadata, NIRA identification databases, and even mobile money transactions. One former police IT technician described how the system can map out entire political networks by cross-referencing travel data with who was nearby  even identifying attendees at political events based on facial scans and boda boda GPS data.

Opposition rallies are now quietly disrupted before they even begin. In Masaka last year, organizers arrived to find roads suddenly rerouted and traffic inexplicably gridlocked. Officials blamed routine signal maintenance.

One civil rights lawyer put it bluntly: “This is cyber-policing for political repression.”

Perhaps most troubling is the complete lack of transparency. There are no public oversight mechanisms, no clear regulations on how ITMS data is accessed or stored, and no civilian review body to ensure it isn’t being abused.

While the police tout its traffic enforcement benefits, rights activists say ITMS can also be accessible to state security departments including military intelligence for reasons having nothing to do with transportation.

Adding to the concerns is the heavy involvement of Huawei, a company accused in multiple countries of enabling authoritarian surveillance. Procurement documents show that Huawei not only provided the infrastructure but also trained Ugandan officials in facial recognition and social graph analysis , essentially teaching them how to profile entire communities from a few camera feeds.

“The implications are terrifying. The opposition isn’t just being monitored , it’s being digitally fenced, followed, and preemptively silenced”. Says a Kampala city human rights defender.

“Opposition supporters fear retribution simply for being seen near a rally. Journalists, lawyers, and civil society organizers now live under constant suspicion, flagged for their associations, not their actions”.

“And all of this is happening with no data protection law in place, no legal checks, and no public disclosure. This is a system operating in the shadows, built with taxpayer money, and used not to protect, but to control”.

Digital rights groups are now calling for a full parliamentary inquiry into ITMS. Some opposition lawyers are exploring legal avenues, while activists scramble to educate their supporters on how to avoid digital tracking  from switching vehicles and disabling GPS to using encrypted communication apps.

“This isn’t about traffic. It never was,” says Jamie Namulondo, a vocal digital rights advocate. “This is about power. And the tools of the future are being used to hold the people hostage.”