Neural Technologies Ltd is a UK-headquartered technology company that provides revenue protection, digital integration, signaling, AI and machine learning software to businesses, particularly in the telecoms sector. Founded in 1990, it claims to operate in over 35 countries, globally.
Based in Berkshire, Neural Technologies made revenues of UK£ 3.46 million in 2023. In 2022, the Canadian Lumine Group acquired the company. The company advertises three main services: revenue protection, data integration, and signaling. It does not openly publicise its solutions for state security agencies.
Controversies
Kenya
In October 2024, Kenya’s largest newspaper, the Daily Nation published an investigation into the relationship between the country’s largest telecoms company, Vodafone subsidiary Safaricom PLC, and Kenyan security agencies. The report alleged that Safaricom PLC provides systematic, unlawful access to its network for police and intelligence to identify, track and locate suspects, as well as predictively identify them. The report was published in a year that witnessed escalating state repression of protests, including the ‘gen z’ protest of Spring-Summer 2024. Safaricom denied the allegations, in a terse response, and subsequently took SLAPP action against the Nation and its journalists, in a move condemned by Reporters Without Borders.
The Nation investigation also alleged that Neural Technologies embedded in Safaricom’s internal systems a data management system that allows security services virtually unrestricted real-time access to Kenyans’ call data. A former Neural Technologies employee interviewed by the Nation also acknowledged developing a browser-based portal for police officers in the field to access Safaricom customer data. The field access means security agencies can track suspects anywhere around the country by following their mobile phones in real time. The employee is cited as acknowledging that such a project would “never fly” in the US or UK because of privacy laws.
Neural Technologies, the article alleges, also designed a predictive algorithm named ‘Find My Friend’ to analyse network traffic and predictively identify suspects through their movement patterns, call records and associations.
Neural Technologies did not respond to an opportunity to comment by the report’s authors. In the months following publication, Kenyan and international human rights organisations contacted Neural Technologies to request a response to the allegations. Neural Technologies is not known to have replied to any organisation seeking a response to the allegations.
However, a 2016 interview by then-Neural Technologies Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) appears to confirm some of the Nation’s findings. The CCO acknowledges Kenyan state security services’ use of data from Neural Technologies software running on Safaricom’s network to find gangs and “close them down”:
In fraud and law enforcement [Safaricom] are definitely very proactive. Kenya is probably quite unique regarding its geographic location. It’s got some terrorist activities, so they’ve got some issues internally, and I think they’re working very well with their law enforcement, utilizing the information we’ve got in our system…
“We’ve been looking at situations where law enforcement have already identified an individual – caught him with an elephant tusk under his arm – they’re looking at his phone, looking to track all the people he’s been traveling with and communicating with… Law enforcement is looking to use the telco information to find the gang, and close them down.”
