Outrage as army chiefs back snooping Bill

Outrage as army chiefs back snooping Bill

• Parliamentary committee pores over snooping Bill

• Zim unveils phone, e-mail snooping Bill

• Zim promises law on cyber crime

• New law will allow phone, e-mail spying

• Mugabe wants US to shed internet control

• Mugabe speech: internet governance not a US preserve

• Hackers break into government website

• Mugabe's spies monitoring your calls, mail

• MDC claims government intercepting e-mails

• Alcatel deploys in Zimbabwe

• What Mugabe can and cannot do with your e-mails

• MWeb 'will obey' e-mail snooping laws

• Mugabe plays Big Brother on the internet

• Supreme Court bans e-mail snooping

• Mugabe wants to read your e-mails

By Lebo Nkatazo

ZIMBABWEAN army chiefs have thrown their weight behind a proposed spying law which will allow the government to intercept e-mails and telephone calls to protect "national interest" and "national security".

The Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) on Wednesday called for the strengthening of the proposed Interception of Communications Bill as critics expressed outrage.

ZDF's Brigadier General Mike Sango on Wednesday told a Parliamentary Committee on Transport and Communications, hearing submissions on the proposed legislation, that it was a "good law".

President Robert Mugabe's government wants legislation that will 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 tap phones, intercept e-mail and internet communications as well as the monitoring of private mail to "protect national interest and security".

The Bill also authorises the Minister of Transport and Communications to issue a warrant to spies ordering the interception of information if there are “reasonable grounds for the minister to think that an offence has been committed”.

Brigadier General Sango said: “I have come with our lawyer from the defence forces and this is a good law. We will be making submission that it be strengthened.

"The advancement in technology today means that no-one is safe at all from the source of terrorism, mercenarism and organised crime. A piece of legislation has been long overdue on this particular problem."

The Parliamentary Committee said it would give seven days to any interested groups to make written submission on the Bill.

Internet service providers warned they will be driven out of business if the government goes ahead with proposed bugging laws that will necessitate the purchase of expensive surveillance equipment.

Rights groups told a public hearing in Harare Wednesday that the proposed new laws contravened freedom of information and expression.

And a board member of the Zimbabwe Internet Service Providers Association warned that the new laws would be open to abuse, said the paper.

Jim Holland told the hearing that service providers would find it too expensive to install the bugging equipment and this would drive them out of business.

The head of the state-appointed Media and Information Commission, Tafataona Mahoso, defended the regulations, saying they were in line with a UN directive for countries to put in place surveillance mechanisms in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.

A legal officer from the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) told the hearing that the Bill contained provisions similar to those in an earlier Post and Telecommunications Act that were nullified by the Supreme Court because they contravened freedom of information.

MISA's legal officer Wilbert Mandinde said: "An aggrieved person is given a right to appeal to the Minister of Transport and Communications who is neither independent nor impartial. He authorises the interception and monitoring in the first place."
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