South Africa published in November a discussion paper, "Review of Security Legislation" on 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: http://jya.com/za-esnoop.htm (364K) 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. Still, 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. Thanks to APB for pointing.