Thanks to Alan Barrett for pointing to the provocative
SA wiretap paper. And his critique is apt.
We offer it in HTML:
http://jya.com/za-esnoop.htm (364K)
The "Review of Security Legislation" looks at electronic
surveillance law in several countries -- South Africa, US, UK,
France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and
Hong Kong, with detailed review of legislation of the last two --
as a basis for new legislation to protect against latest intrusive
technology, or, rather, to restrict its usage to government
agencies.
Its comparative review of surveillance law is informative
for the way it lays out the similarity of each country's definition of
the threat of technology -- somewhat to citizen privacy but more
importantly to law enforcement. It notes variations in privacy
protection law, and finds, for example, US and UK deficiencies
in that area even as these countries excell in manufacturing
the evil tools. SA sees strong encryption as a challenge to
authority!
So, as Alan notes, South Africa is joining the crowd in tightening
controls on technology by proposing that telecomm providers
make their systems accessible to government (at their own
expense), emulating the recent US-EU snooping agreement
advanced by the FBI and Europol.
