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Interception of Communications Bill - Index of articles
Spying
Bill to be reviewed
MISA-Zimbabwe
September 04, 2006
As pressure mounts
for the withdrawal of the controversial Interception
of Communications Bill, the government has promised to revisit
the proposed law and remove offending provisions from the Bill.
The Minister of
Transport and Communications, Christopher Mushohwe, made the undertaking
when he appeared before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on
Transport and Communications in Harare on 4 September 2006.
Mushohwe argued
that the Bill came out of the unhealthy legal vacuum that was created
by the 2004 Supreme Court ruling which declared unconstitutional
Sections 98 and 103 of the Postal and Telecommunications Act which
provided for the interception of communications. He said the Bill
was not peculiar to Zimbabwe but that interception laws also existed
in other jurisdictions such as the United States of America, United
Kingdom, Australia and South Africa.
Former Information
and Publicity Minister and Tsholotsho Member of Parliament, Professor
Jonathan Moyo, and Harare Central legislator, Murisi Zwizwai, urged
the Minister to surrender the excessive powers he conferred on himself
in terms of Section 6 of the Bill as the licensing authority for
the issuance of the warrants of interception. The Bill does not
provide for judicial and parliamentary oversight and vests the powers
of appeal solely with the Minister.
The two legislators
stressed that in a Constitutional democracy the doctrine of the
separation of powers was designed to provide checks and balances
on various arms of the state. The proposed law, among other contentious
provisions seeks to empower the chief of defence intelligence, the
director-general of the Central Intelligence Organisation, the Commissioner
of Police and the Commissioner General of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority
to intercept telephonic, email and cellphone messages by applying
for such warrants to the minister.
The Bill also
empowers state agencies to open mail passing through the post and
through licensed courier service providers.
Moyo and Zwizwai
argued that this amounted to an executive arm of the state applying
to itself for the warrants in question in contravention of the principles
of the separation of powers.
In response, Mushohwe
assured the Portfolio Committee on Transport and Communications
that his ministry would revisit the Bill and effect the requisite
changes where necessary.
MISA-Zimbabwe
together with other leading human rights lobby organisations and
the business community are pushing for the total withdrawal of the
Bill arguing that if passed in its present state, the country’s
civil liberties, notably the right to freedom of expression, privacy
and business confidentiality, would be seriously compromised notwithstanding
the negative impact on the growth of the Internet Communication
Technologies sector.
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