secrecy bill


Fact box: A look at SA’s secrecy bill

Wednesday, November 23, 2011 2 Comments by Zelda

South Africa’s parliament has passed legislation aimed at better protecting state secrets, but the measure has been widely criticised for provisions that could help the government hide corruption. The following are a few major provisions contained in the legislation known as the Protection of Information Bill.

* The bill is aimed at ensuring “a coherent approach to protection of state information and the classification and declassification of state information and will create a legislative framework for the state to respond to espionage and other associated hostile activities”.

* Foreign spies are required to register their status as agents with the government or face between three and five years in prison.

* The measure applies to all organs of the state, including municipalities, with the state security minister deciding what is a part of the government.

* The measure applies to all information regarded as ”valuable” to the state. The state security minister within 12 months of the commencement of the act can prescribe categories of information that are valuable and subject to protection.

* State agencies will set up procedures for managing sensitive information.

* Sensitive information includes matters “relating to the protection and preservation of all things owned or maintained for the public by the state”, state security, economic growth, scientific achievements and diplomacy.

* Any head of an organ of state may classify or reclassify information. The State Security Ministry is the gate keeper for the classification.

* Unauthorised possession of classified material is a criminal act.

* Material remains classified for no longer than 20 years, unless the state provided a compelling reason to keep it secret.

* The branch that classifies information can decide whether to grant requests for declassification.

* The unlawful delivery and distribution of “top secret” material can be punished by 15 to 25 years in jail.

* The unlawful delivery and distribution of “classified” material carries a three- to five-year prison term.

* Computer hacking of state records is a criminal offence punishable by five to 10 years in jail.

* Any person who publishes or discloses state secrets faces up to 10 years in prison and those conspiring with that person also face jail terms.

* Any government official who classifies information not considered as being valuable to the state faces up to three years in jail.

Credit to: Times Live

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Secrecy bill opposition reaching fever pitch

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 4 Comments by Zelda

Almost 14 years ago to the day, former president Nelson Mandela told journalists that press freedom would never be under threat in South Africa for as “long as the ANC is the majority party”.

That was on November 19 1997, but now all that looks set to change, with political parties, media organisations, civil society groups and trade unions saying the ANC’s feared Protection of State Information Bill will stifle the right of the media and whistle-blowers to expose corruption.

The ANC is expected to use its majority in the National Assembly today to pass the bill, which makes provision for the classification of state information and imposes stiff penalties, potentially of up to 20 years’ imprisonment, on journalists who divulge classified information.

Ahead of the vote this afternoon, opposition to the bill has reached fever pitch.

Editors from around the country are in Cape Town to join a picket by the Right2Know campaign – a nation-wide coalition of individuals and organisations opposed to the bill – outside parliament.

The National Press Club’s campaign calling on South Africans to wear black in protest at the bill had gone viral on social networks by last night.

The SA National Editors’ Forum sent a letter to all MPs this morning, urging them to vote against the legislation.

The letter stated that, despite important work on the bill in the past 18 months, there were still “serious remaining flaws” in it. Chief among these was the lack of a public interest defence. “In its current form, the bill represents an attack on principles of open democracy that are deeply embedded in our Constitution and our national life,” read the letter.

Prominent human rights activist Rhoda Kadalie lashed out at the ANC yesterday, saying it had confused what was in the best interests of the public with what was in the best interests of the party.

“When liberation democratic parties feel threatened, they go for the judiciary, they go for the media and they go for freedom of speech,” said Kadalie.

The SA Municipal Workers’ Union added its voice, saying the bill would “disadvantage whistle-blowers and workers who are fighting corruption”.

The union called on all unions “to ensure that the secrecy bill does not become law”.

The coalition had planned protests in Johannesburg, Durban, Pretoria and Cape Town.

A joint statement, issued by activist groups Equal Education, the Treatment Action Campaign, Section27, the Social Justice Campaign and Ndifuna Ukwazi, said that they all oppose the bill, and if it became law “members of parliament will be saying to South Africans that it is okay to punish the people who disclose and write about corruption and mismanagement in government and the corporate sector”.

Dene Smuts, the DA spokesman for justice and constitutional development, said yesterday that she still hoped that there would be further discussions on, and amendments to, the bill.

The ANC has defended the bill in its current form, with chief whip Mathole Motshekga’s office yesterday saying that the lack of a public interest defence was in line with “international best practice” and that a “serious country” would not “compromise the security of its citizens for the sake of a scoop for the media”.

  • Sapa reports that Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu lashed out at the bill, which he described as ”flawed”. “It is insulting to all South Africans to be asked to stomach legislation that could be used to outlaw whistle-blowing and investigative journalism … and that makes the state answerable only to the state,” he said in a statement.

Credit to: Times Live (Charl du Plessis)

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ANC finalises info bill

Friday, September 2, 2011 No Comments by Zelda

MPs finalised the Protection of Information Bill on Friday, with the ANC using its majority muscle to vote down opposition amendments to protect whistleblowers and the media.

Civil rights groups said this would see them seek legal advice on launching a constitutional review of the new state secrets legislation.

“We are deeply disappointed that a public interest defence was not included,” Open Democracy Advice Centre director Alison Tilley said.

“It means that journalists and others are not protected for disclosing evidence of state malpractice. We will be taking opinion from counsel.”

Voting on the bill clause-by-clause began after a year of fractious debate in and outside the drafting committee, where the ruling party eventually agreed to restrict the instances in which information can be kept secret by the state.

It agreed to limit the power to classify information to the intelligence and security services, with other departments having to seek special permission to keep secret files.

The opposition and civil society organisations said this was an important victory.

Said the Democratic Alliance’s Dene Smuts: “We have rewritten this bill as a decent piece of intelligence and classification law.

“It is only in the offences clauses that it has gone wrong, to our enormous regret,” she added.

“We tried hard to get a public interest defence for our media and anybody else.”

Credit to: Times Live

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Info Bill back in the spotlight

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 No Comments by Zelda

The Protection of Information Bill is back in the spotlight in parliament, with the focus on a new panel that will have the power to decide if information has been wrongly classified.

The proposed law – dubbed the “secrecy bill” – has been widely criticised for giving the state wide powers to classify information, and for punishing people who publish that classified information, even if it is in the interest of the public.

Last month, after labour federation Cosatu threatened to challenge the bill in the Constitutional Court, the ANC agreed to restrict the power to classify information to state security agencies. Initially, about 1000 organs of state, from ministries to public museums, would have been given the right to classify information as secret, but now only security organs may do so.

But opposition parties and civil society groups say a key problem in the bill remains: it provides for information to be classified in the interests of “national security” but it is not clear what exactly national security is.

The parties have now agreed that the bill should include a new classification-review panel of five people to be appointed by the state Security minister to oversee the classification of information.

No political party leaders or officials will be allowed to sit on the panel, which will have powers to instruct organs of state to declassify information if it believes that it should not have been made secret.

Nkwame Cedile, Western Cape co-ordinator of the Right2Know campaign, said: “The ANC has conceded to our demand that they set up an independent body of constitutional experts who can oversee what gets classified. This is a temporary victory for us.”

DA MP Dene Smuts and African Christian Democratic Party MP Steve Swart insisted that the panel “have teeth”.

ANC MP Lluwellyn Landers moved yesterday to counter allegations that government departments that wanted to hide corruption would simply classify information.

Landers said the ANC wanted to increase the penalties in the bill for those who misused classification to cover up wrongdoing.

But Cedile said this did not go far enough and it was likely that, if the bill were passed, there would still be attempts to classify information in a bid to cover up fraud and corruption – even if the offenders knew they faced penalties.

Rhodes University journalism professor Jane Duncan said last month that, even with the ANC’s new concessions, it would be “extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ensure transparency of the most shadowy of all state structures, the security cluster”.

The parliamentary discussions will go on for the rest of the week. The bill is due to be finalised by the end of September.

Credit to: Times Live

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