Description: Kenya's High Court found that the state-owned Kenya Broadcasting Corporation unlawfully collected employees' facial biometrics for mandatory attendance without informed consent or a prior data protection impact assessment. The broadcaster conceded the union's case. The court quashed the rollout and ordered deletion of collected data under regulatory supervision, including measures to ensure third parties retained no copies.
Editor Notes: 07/03/2025: Union raised concerns. 09/09/2025: Staff memo announced system use from 09/15/2025, used as the rollout-date anchor; exact first collection is unreported. 10/13/2025: Union requested suspension. 11/25/2025: High Court declared the rollout unlawful and ordered deletion. 10/20/2026: Incident ID created.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Facial recognition system developers developed an AI system deployed by Kenya Broadcasting Corporation , Facial recognition system deployers and Employers, which harmed Kenya Broadcasting Corporation employees , Journalists , Biometric data subjects and Privacy.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Kenya Broadcasting Corporation facial recognition attendance system , Facial recognition systems , Biometric data processing systems and Enterprise AI systems
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1770
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2025-09-15
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
![Kenya Union of Journalists v Kenya Broadcasting Corporation [2025] KEHC 17216 (KLR) - Judicial Review Miscellaneous Application E355 of 2025](https://res.cloudinary.com/pai/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/c_fill,h_640/v1/legacy/placeholder)
Loading...
![Kenya Union of Journalists v Kenya Broadcasting Corporation [2025] KEHC 17216 (KLR) - Judicial Review Miscellaneous Application E355 of 2025](https://res.cloudinary.com/pai/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/c_fill,h_480/v1/legacy/d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e)
RE Aburili post-incident response
Kenya Union of Journalists v Kenya Broadcasting Corporation [2025] KEHC 17216 (KLR) - Judicial Review Miscellaneous Application E355 of 2025
REPUBLIC OF KENYA
IN THE HIGH COURT OF KENYA AT NAIROBI
JUDICIAL REVIEW DIVISION
JUDICIAL REVIEW O.…
Loading...
The High Court has ordered the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) to delete and destroy biometric data collected from its employees after ruling that its facial recognition attendance system was unlawfully implemented.
This was after the …
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
Seen something similar?