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Nesrea’s Stand on Base Stations -Eze

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Eunice Eze, is Lagos State coordinator of National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency (Nesrea).

She spoke about her agency’s activities, the fight against sub-standard products, counterfeiting and the dumping of electrical/electronics equipment known as e-waste.

Eze clarified issues on erection of masts and towers and why the agency is decommissioning some base stations. She spoke to peter ugwu

Overview of Nesrea’s Operations
We really appreciate the magnitude of Nigerians becoming aware of our environment. Before Nesrea came on board, it was a chaotic situation where no body cared, the environment were vandalized.

There were several complaints from communities, offices and people who really felt affected by the state of our environment.

Industries were discharging waste indiscriminately, even polluting sources of drinking water by various communities; proliferation of telecom masks; then you wake up in the morning to see that one telecom company has deployed equipment to erect a mask in your neighbourhood.

People complained, but we have taken care of that. Also, the issue of electrical electronics, people were throwing them around and burning same to the detriment of the public.

So, to tackle the menace, Nesera came up with 24 rules to regulate activities in the environment.

And we are not relenting in efforts to see that they are implemented.

 For instance, under electrical regulations, there is a part that stipulates requirements for the importation of electrical electronics.

The International Dimensions
There is also the Basel convention on the control of transboundary movements of hazardous wastes and their disposal.

Basel Convention as it is popularly called is an international treaty that was designed to reduce the movements of hazardous waste between nations and specifically to prevent transfer of hazardous waste from developed to less developed countries (LDCs) and Nigeria is a signatory to that.

There is a harmful wastes Act that prohibits importation of e-wastes into the country. If you are caught at the ports, your guilty of an offense.

These regulations are the podia that Nesrea stand on to operate.

 Our basic responsibility is to ensure compliance among the parties involved. The importers of these items now register with Nesrea

 In 2002 when government initiated the platform, it was compulsory but free. About 232 people (representing different companies) registered.

And 177 of them were given license.

Before that we carried out investigations to ascertain that their claims were genuine, like warehouse locations, if duly registered with the corporate Affairs commission (CAC).

Meanwhile, we don’t spare anyone that goes contrary to the guidelines.

We have even gone a step further that when we receive alert we contact our sister agencies overseas or through Automated System for Customs Data (ASYCUDA) to take actions by being at the ports to examine the container on arrival.

Components of e-Wastes
Any electrical electronic product imported that fails to work, especially when it is not newly produced is regarded as waste.

Any one found broken is regarded as waste or it has not power cable attached to it. Because sometimes they have power cables, but were removed or were cut off. Even such items that are not properly packaged are regarded as wastes.

The product must contain the value that the buyer can utilize.

These are some of the ways we assess electrical and electronics equipment to ascertain their usability. More so, any one that is cracked has turned a waste.
 
We don’t want people to import such things into the country and start looking for technicians to repair them before they are sold.

The era will soon be phased out and the essence is that Nigeria has refused to be a dumping ground for anything e-waste.

It is a serious matter right now. Any container found with e-waste consignment is returned to country of its origin.

Effects
The major problem with importing e-waste is that we are yet to have recycling plants, where they could be turned to wealth.

What people do is that they will take the valuable parts and burn the debris, thereby releasing harmful metals to the atmosphere, like mercury, lead and bromide are there.

And some of these substances have cancerous effects; and when one is down with cancer, life in the line. So, is not just about financial loss, the environment is destroyed.

Because as they burn such items, eco-system, people inhale the smokes leading to cancer of the lungs, infertility; if a pregnant woman inhales it, it can cause miscarriage.

 And that is why government takes it serious; e-waste is not something we can manage, because we do not have the facilities to manage them.

Sensitization
We have carried out sensitization programmes in Alaba International market, Computer Village, Ladipo market that is for Lagos, however, our programmes have nationwide outlook.

We have gone round the ports training Customs officials, and terminal operators. Definitely, there have been good collaborations between Customs and Nesrea staff, especially during our ports inspections.

 In fact security agencies at the ports are aware of the effects continued importation of the items and the results have been impressive.

Once the alert comes we swing into action.

For instance, last month we intercepted 5 containers.

Nevertheless, we have recorded cases where consignments are released after certifying that the contents are not e-wastes.

We are not stopping there; we have extended our tentacles to the Standard Organization of Nigeria (Son) and the Consumer Protection Council (CPC).

 CPC in particular is bent on making sure that consumers get value for their money spent on purchasing goods. Such complaints they take them serious.

Recycling Plants
Again, Lagos State currently is the best environmental friendly state in the country; very soon their four recycle plants will begin work.

They have established collection centres for different categories of wastes-municipal, medical and sachet water/nylon bags; they are already recycling those ones.

 We are working with their agencies; Lagos State Waste Management Authority (Lawma), Lagos State Environmental Protection Agency (Lasepa) to hype the imports of ridding our nation of e-waste.

 Meanwhile, at the Federal Government level plans are underway to have recycling plants at different locations in the country.

Talks are ongoing with expatriates to have them come live.

The fact is that they are capital intensive.

For the sake of clarifications, we have concluded plans for national recycling plants; we are only waiting for the budgetary allocations.

Telecom Infrastructure 
Like I said earlier, with Nesrea on ground erecting of telecom masts became properly regulated. We are also making sure that rules of the game are kept.

That is why the  decommission of some base stations.

Our concern is for them to appreciate that there are guidelines that must be complied with in setting up and operating these infrastructure.

For instance, when Nesrea was established the law said that the boundary should be 10 metres away from the bounding wall or next wall closest to it, while Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC’s) guidelines stipulated 5 metres.

Nesrea felt that was not enough, especially when residential centres are involved.
When the masks are established in open places, that is a different case. It cannot be 5 meters, it must be 10 meters apart.

When we moved to implement that, NCC felt that telecom operators are their babies, but Nesrea had broader perspective to that.

Nigeria is our country and we have no other country, so we ought to work together. Nesrea was established in 2007 while NCC started working on its mandate since 2005; therefore, Nesrea laws are the most recent.

However, the conflict has been resolved, because people came to terms that the most recent laws should be made to guide such segment of our economy.

We have no choice, but to work in unity, if we are to live in cleaner and healthy environment.

Challenges
People are not easily given to change.

There are a lot of resistances. For instance, currently there is a law on vehicular emission, but how willing are the people to cue-into the agenda.

Our air is polluted which results to frequent asthmatic attacks.

Two stroke engine generators, people put them on, close to their doors and sleep off.

It happened in Imo State of recent, where a family of seven went to bed and never woke. What happened? Their generator was on.

That is why we are not relenting on our efforts to see that such thing does not repeat itself.

Two stroke engine generators are totally banned in Nigeria now.

 Should any one import them, they must be sent back to the country they originated.

We are only going to allow four stroke engine into the country. Enough is enough.


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Our 2023 Ads Safety Report

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By Duncan Lennox, VP & GM of Ads Privacy and Safety

Billions of people around the world rely on Google products to provide relevant and trustworthy information, including ads. That’s why we have thousands of people working around the clock to safeguard the digital advertising ecosystem. Today, we are releasing our annual Ads Safety Report to share the progress we’ve made in enforcing our advertiser and publisher policies and to hold ourselves accountable in our work of maintaining a healthy ad-supported internet.

The key trend in 2023 was the impact of generative AI. This new technology introduced significant and exciting changes to the digital advertising industry, from performance optimization to image editing. Of course, generative AI also presents new challenges. We take these challenges seriously and will outline the work we are doing to address them head-on.

Just as importantly, generative AI presents a unique opportunity to improve our enforcement efforts significantly. Our teams are embracing this transformative technology, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), so that we can better keep people safe online.

Gen AI Bolsters Enforcement 

Our safety teams have long used AI-driven machine learning systems to enforce our policies at scale. It’s how, for years, we’ve been able to detect and block billions of bad ads before a person ever sees them. But, while still highly sophisticated, these machine learning models have historically needed to be trained extensively – they often rely on hundreds of thousands, if not millions of examples of violative content.

LLMs, on the other hand, are able to rapidly review and interpret content at a high volume, while also capturing important nuances within that content. These advanced reasoning capabilities have already resulted in larger-scale and more precise enforcement decisions on some of our more complex policies. Take, for example, our policy against Unreliable Financial Claims which includes ads promoting get-rich-quick schemes. The bad actors behind these types of ads have grown more sophisticated. They  adjust their tactics and tailor ads around new financial services or products, such as investment advice or digital currencies, to scam users.

To be sure, traditional machine learning models are trained to detect these policy violations. Yet, the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of financial trends make it, at times, harder to differentiate between legitimate and fake services and quickly scale our automated enforcement systems to combat scams. LLMs are more capable of quickly recognizing new trends in financial services, identifying the patterns of bad actors who are abusing those trends and distinguishing a legitimate business from a get-rich-quick scam. This has helped our teams become even more nimble in confronting emerging threats of all kinds.

We’ve only just begun to leverage the power of LLMs for ads safety. Gemini, launched publicly last year, is Google’s most capable AI modeI. We’re excited to have started bringing its sophisticated reasoning capabilities into our ads safety and enforcement efforts.

Our Work to Prevent Fraud and Scams

In 2023, scams and fraud across all online platforms were on the rise. Bad actors are constantly evolving their tactics to manipulate digital advertising in order to scam people and legitimate businesses alike. To counter these ever-shifting threats, we quickly updated policies, deployed rapid-response enforcement teams and sharpened our detection techniques.

  • In November, we launched our Limited Ads Serving policy, which is designed to protect users by limiting the reach of advertisers with whom we are less familiar. Under this policy, we’ve implemented a “get-to-know-you” period for advertisers who don’t yet have an established track record of good behavior, during which impressions for their ads might be limited in certain circumstances–for example, when there is an unclear relationship between the advertiser and a brand they are referencing. Ultimately, Limited Ads Serving, which is still in its early stages, will help ensure well-intentioned advertisers are able to build up trust with users, while limiting the reach of bad actors and reducing the risk of scams and misleading ads.

  • A critical part of protecting people from online harm hinges on our ability to respond to new abuse trends quickly. Toward the end of 2023 and into 2024, we faced a targeted campaign of ads featuring the likeness of public figures to scam users, often through the use of deepfakes. When we detected this threat, we created a dedicated team to respond immediately. We pinpointed patterns in the bad actors’ behavior, trained our automated enforcement models to detect similar ads and began removing them at scale. We also updated our misrepresentation policy to better enable us to rapidly suspend the accounts of bad actors.

Overall, we blocked or removed 206.5 million advertisements for violating our misrepresentation policy, which includes many scam tactics and 273.4 million advertisements for violating our financial services policy. We also blocked or removed over 1 billion advertisements for violating our policy against abusing the ad network, which includes promoting malware.

The fight against scam ads is an ongoing effort, as we see bad actors operating with more sophistication, at a greater scale, using new tactics such as deepfakes to deceive people. We’ll continue to dedicate extensive resources, making significant investments in detection technology and partnering with organizations like the Global Anti-Scam Alliance and Stop Scams UK to facilitate information sharing and protect consumers worldwide.

Investing in Election Integrity

Political ads are an important part of democratic elections. Candidates and parties use ads to raise awareness, share information and engage potential voters. In a year with several major elections around the world, we want to make sure voters continue to trust the election ads they may see on our platforms. That’s why we have long-standing identity verification and transparency requirements for election advertisers, as well as restrictions on how these advertisers can target their election ads. All election ads must also include a “paid for by” disclosure and are compiled in our publicly available transparency report. In 2023, we verified more than 5,000 new election advertisers and removed more than 7.3M election ads that came from advertisers who did not complete verification.

Last year, we were the first tech company to launch a new disclosure requirement for election ads containing synthetic content. As more advertisers leverage the power and opportunity of AI, we want to make sure we continue to provide people with the greater transparency and the information they need to make informed decisions.

Additionally, we’ve continued to enforce our policies against ads that promote demonstrably false election claims that could undermine trust or participation in democratic processes.

Overall 2023 Numbers

Our goal is to catch bad ads and suspend fraudulent accounts before they make it onto our platforms or remove them immediately once detected. AI is improving our enforcement on all these fronts. In 2023, we blocked or removed over 5.5 billion ads, slightly up from the prior year, and 12.7 million advertiser accounts, nearly double from the previous year. Similarly, we work to protect advertisers and people by removing our ads from publisher pages and sites that violate our policies, such as sexually explicit content or dangerous products. In 2023, we blocked or restricted ads from serving on more than 2.1 billion publisher pages, up slightly from 2022. We are also getting better at tackling pervasive or egregious violations. We took broader site-level enforcement action on more than 395,000 publisher sites, up markedly from 2022.

To put the impact of AI on this work into perspective: last year more than 90% of our publisher page level enforcement started with the use of machine learning models, including our latest LLMs. Of course, any advertiser or publisher can still appeal an enforcement action if they think we got it wrong. Our teams will review it and, in the cases where we find errors, use it to improve our systems.

Staying Nimble and Looking Ahead

When it comes to ads safety, a lot can change over the course of a year: the introduction of new technology such as generative AI to novel abuse trends and global conflicts. And the digital advertising space has to be nimble and ready to react. That’s why we are continuously developing new policies, strengthening our enforcement systems, deepening cross-industry collaboration and offering more control to people, publishers and advertisers.

In 2023, for example, we launched the Ads Transparency Center, a searchable hub of all ads from verified advertisers, which helps people quickly and easily learn more about the ads they see on Search, YouTube and Display. We also updated our suitability controls to make it simpler and quicker for advertisers to exclude topics that they wish to avoid across YouTube and Display inventory. Overall, we made 31 updates to our Ads and Publisher policies.

Though we don’t yet know what the rest of 2024 has in store for us, we are confident that our investments in policy, detection and enforcement will prepare us for any challenges ahead.


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InDrive Upgrades App, Announces New Safety Details

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InDrive, an e-hailing firm, announced app upgrades as well as new safety details for riders and drivers.

InDrive’s updated Safety Centre now allows its support team to contact a user’s trusted contacts in emergencies and the number of trusted contacts has been increased from one to five. InDrive says that it is also easier for its support team to share information with emergency services, among other things.

Also, the company said by clicking on the app’s SOS-button, users can see all the information needed when requesting help or reporting an incident – along with a button to call police or ambulance services.

InDrive’s app design has also been updated to improve user experience, making the Safety Centre more visible, it said.

Further, the company said: “inDrive is also testing photo sharing and automatic translation of chat messages, which have been added to the in-app chat function. These make it easier for the driver and rider to clarify the pickup point, and communicate in the same language while traveling.

“Passengers and drivers stay within the application when using these features, so there’s no need to use across other platforms, thereby protecting personal information. For now the feature is currently being tested by a limited number of users to improve its functionality before it is rolled out to everyone.”

The announcement today comes after the company recently revealed it had expanded its financing arrangement with General Catalyst to $146 million, allowing the company to engage in product upgrades, extend its service offerings, and enter new markets in Africa.


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NIN-SIM Linkage: Telcos to Bar More Phones Lines from March 29

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Telecommunications operators in the country are gearing up for another round of disconnections of phone lines for subscribers who have failed to link their National Identification Numbers (NIN) with their SIM cards.

NIN-SIM Linkage: Telcos to Bar More Phones Lines from March 29

The disconnection which will happen Friday, March 29, following a directive from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) requiring all registered SIMs lacking proper NIN linkage to be either corrected or completely disconnected from networks.

The ongoing process, which commenced on February 28, 2024, is part of the government’s efforts to curb criminal activities like banditry and kidnapping, contributing to enhancing national security.

There are indications of a potential third phase in April 2024.

Operators have reportedly cooperated with the NCC in executing the directive, affirming their commitment to national security objectives and assuring full compliance by the specified deadlines.

The second phase will target subscribers with five or more SIMs from a single operator lacking verified NIN-SIM linkages.

The third phase, set to commence on April 15, will focus on subscribers with four SIMs or fewer and unverified NINs.

While telecom companies seek a review and extension of the April deadline for the third phase, indications from the NCC suggest a steadfast adherence to the established timelines.

The first phase saw the barring of 40 million lines, comprising around 17 million active SIMs without NIN submissions and 23 million inactive SIMs lacking NINs over the past year.

 

 

 

 


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