A quick summary of South Africa's "Interception and Monitoring" bill, which has cleared the Cabinet and is heading for a vote in the Parliament: * Internet providers and telephone companies must provide a pipe to a National Monitoring Center for Carnivoresque surveillance. "The Police Service, the Defence Force, the Agency, the Service and the Directorate must, at State expense, establish, equip, operate and maintain central monitoring centres... Duplicate signals of communications authorized to be monitored in terms of this Act, must be routed by the service provider concerned to the designated central monitoring centre concerned." * Internet providers may not "provide any telecommunication service which does not have the capacity to be monitored." A provider is responsible for "decrypting any communication encrypted by a customer if the facility for encryption was provided by the service provider concerned." This represents an attack on liberty, privacy, and autonomy, and is akin to anti-encryption rules in Russia a few years ago. Though as a practical matter, a lot would seem to turn on the definition of "provide." Does that mean giving someone an SSL-enabled web browser? IPv6 software? * The legislation bans the provision of anonymous Internet access. It says: "A service provider must... require from such person his or her full names, residential, business or postal address and identity number." * Internet providers and telcos must pay for their own surveillance. "A service provider must at own cost and within the period, if any, specified by the Minister of Communications in a directive referred to in subsection (4)(a), acquire the necessary facilities and devices to enable the monitoring of communications in terms of this Act. The investment, technical, maintenance and operating costs in enabling a telecommunication service to be monitored, must be carried by the service provider providing such a service." * Internet providers cannot reveal wiretaps. "No person who is or was concerned in the performance of any function in terms of this Act, may disclose any information which he or she obtained in the performance of such a function" (except to officials or courts). The text of the legislation is here: http://www.pmg.org.za/bills/Interception0107.htm -Declan ******* http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/africa/newsid_1484000/1484698.stm Protests over SA 'snooping' bill 2001-08-13 06:10:06 By Philippa Garson in Johannesburg Protests are growing in South Africa against the country's plan to give the security services new powers to monitor terrorists and serious criminals. Opponents say the Interception and Monitoring Bill is draconian, describing it as a charter for government snooping. Given only three weeks to make submissions on the Bill, non-government organisations have been making last-ditch attempts to garner more time to respond before the 13 August deadline. The bill was quietly passed by South Africa's Cabinet last month, largely catching the public unawares. It provides for state monitoring of all telecommunications systems, including mobile phones, internet and e-mail, once permission has been granted by relevant authorities. In most cases a judge must grant the order, but in some instances a police or army officer of a particular rank may do so. [...] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message ----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@wasabisystems.com