www.thesouthafrican.com
3 - 9 September 2013
Issue 530
41565
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SA GOVT COULD BE SPYING ON YOUR EMAILS - LEGALLY
KING
STEER
| The passage of SA’s new ‘ Spy Bill’ complements last year’s Secrecy Bill to vastly expand the Zuma government’s legal powers of surveillance. Are we more watched than US citizens?
FOR ONLY
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BY STAFF REPORTER
THE Spy Bill complements last year’s Protection of State Information Bill (known as the Secrecy Bill) to create a formidable legal framework for the unfettered surveillance of South African and international communications and individuals by the Rainbow Nation’s spooks. These powers – snooping into foreign electronic communications without a warrant, a mandate to protect a vaguelydefined ‘political stability’, the right to classify information without explanation – would be alarming enough for a trusted organisation. The intelligence services, however, are not among the gems in the South African state. As far back as 2006, then-Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils’s Ministerial Review Commission into his own department uncovered a culture of abuse of Constitutional rights as well as a general context of overly broad mandates and rather vague constraints on the power of the spooks. In this worrying climate, the Spy Bill has failed to generate the depth and breadth of organised political opposition inspired by the Secrecy Bill. And yet, properly understood, its menace to South Africans’ fundamental right to privacy is no less real. One clause in the Spy Bill allows snooping on any news service emanating outside South Africa, without the inconvenience of a warrant. If more South Africans understood that this effectively provided for unlimited state snooping on their social network accounts, including Skype calls, it is unlikely that the
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SETTING SAIL: Crowds estimated in excess of 120,000 lined the banks of the Thames on Sunday to cheer on the colourful pageant to mark the start of the Clipper 2013-14 Round the World Yacht Race. ‘Invest Africa’ was the only African boat. Read more on page 2.
law would have passed without mass protest on a scale equal to, or even surpassing, the Secrecy Bill. What is certain is that the two laws combine to devastating effect: both criminalising the possession of classified information and providing the legal means by which the state can discover who is talking about such information in their emails, Skype calls and social media correspondence. As the Mail and Guardian’s Phillip de Wet has reported (“Spy Wars”, 21 June 2013), Ronnie Kasrils
asked during his time in Intellgence whether “anyone should be surprised…that with the enormous technological ability that any developed country has today, would you be surprised about revelations relating to prying into foreign countries, into one’s own citizens, never mind foreign citizens? The ability is there.” In political terms, governments are by definition paranoid organisations: it is their job to anticipate, and seek out evidence of, threats to Continued on page 2
INSIDE:
p3 | Nelson Mandela, ‘critical but mostly stable’, released from hospital p5 | SA vet Dr Will Fowlds talks rhino conservation in London
p10 | Protect yourself from ‘dirty wifi’
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