Civil Trace (Missing Link Kenya)
Open-Source Community Public Safety Network & Verified Alert Hub
Overview
When a vulnerable family member goes missing or vital identity documents are lost, families across Kenya and the Global South face panic. Historically, families post flyers on social media—only for posts to vanish in algorithmic feeds within 48 hours, permanently index private distress photos on search engines, or expose grieving relatives to predatory ransom extortion. What began as Missing Link Kenya (currently accessible as an early prototype) has been completely re-architected into Civil Trace: an open-source, community-audited civic platform designed to coordinate rapid verified responses while safeguarding citizen privacy.
The Challenge
Civic tech applications routinely collapse under spam, vigilante bounties, and poor network conditions. Critical requirements included: (1) preventing fraudulent or malicious reports without adding bureaucratic friction during emergencies, (2) functioning reliably across low-cost mobile handsets during intermittent cellular outages in remote areas, (3) eliminating financial bounty hunting that breeds extortion, and (4) ensuring full legal compliance with the Kenya Data Protection Act (KDPA) 2019.
The Solution
I re-architected the system around 'Friction by Design' and state partitioning. Ingestion requires a mandatory Police Occurrence Book (OB) verification before alerts are broadcast publicly. The frontend is built as a state-partitioned Progressive Web App (PWA): emergency phone lines and the core UI shell are permanently cached offline via service workers, while network transmissions are reserved for real-time map updates and sighting reports. Financial incentives were replaced with a zero-cash civic reputation ledger. Furthermore, KDPA compliance is enforced through automatic media expiration (TTL) and instant right-to-be-forgotten takedowns upon case resolution. The project is developed completely in the open on GitHub to encourage civic collaboration.
Key Results
Established a rigorous, dignity-centered blueprint for African civic tech. The open-source repository on GitHub provides civic organizations, developers, and local police stations with a verifiable, spam-resistant infrastructure that transforms fragmented social media panic into actionable, geolocated search coordination.
- Mandatory Police Occurrence Book (OB) Verification Pipeline
- State-Partitioned Offline-First PWA (Cached Emergency Shell + Online Sync)
- Zero-Cash Civic Gamification Ledger to Deter Extortion and Scams
- KDPA-Compliant Data Dignity (Automated Media TTL & Right-to-be-Forgotten Takedowns)
- Geospatial Sighting Heatmaps with Open-Source Leaflet & OpenStreetMap
Engineering Deep Dives
In-depth architectural postmortems, system design trade-offs, and production blueprints written for this project.
Tech Stack
Deep Dives
Architectural essays exploring the code and infrastructure: