Lesley Stones
12 July 2002
Johannesburg — Petitioners says it is seriously flawed
A LAST-minute petition to prevent the contentious Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill from being signed into law has been delivered to President Thabo Mbeki by a group of technology lawyers.
The IT Lawyers' Forum is urging Mbeki to send the bill back for redrafting, citing a series of technical and logical flaws.
"SA is the leader in the African unity drive and it is almost inevitable that other African countries will implement e-commerce laws similar to those in SA," the forum's spokesman Ryk Meiring said yesterday.
"If we don't have best practices it is almost guaranteed that other countries will promulgate inefficient laws. That is the last thing Africa needs when it is trying to take its place in the world economy," he said.
The forum is an association of experts who specialise in technology and telecommunications. They are asking Mbeki to sign only those chapters that are reasonable, necessary and urgent.
Meiring said he was not very confident that the petition supported by about 60 lawyers would persuade Mbeki to claw back the bill, but it would join an already weighty pile of protests.
The petition reviews every chapter and praises those which are well drafted and will boost the growth of the internet and ecommerce. That includes stronger laws against cyber criminals, consumer protection and privacy clauses, and moves to see government make more use of electronic communications.
The bill creates "sweeping and ill-defined new discretionary powers for the minister of communications", and will compromise individual privacy and the stability of private organisations.
A section which has provoked the most ire was the one on how closely government should control the .za internet domain, the petition claims. But other chapters are equally controversial and potentially more damaging to business and individuals, the lawyers say.
A chapter allowing the communications department to appoint cyber inspectors should be withdrawn, they say. Setting up a force which is separate from the police force and had no obligation to cooperate with the police made no sense, said Meiring.
Other concerns arise from a chapter allowing the communications minister to decide that private databases are vital to national security, and to dictate how the data in them can be used. That could see companies forced to reveal confidential data about their clients.
Another controversial clause stipulates that any software with the ability to encrypt data must be registered with government. "That may result in the best technology not being used in SA because the developers would have to have to pay for their software to be put through a vetting process," said Meiring.
The forum has not suggested how those clauses could be rewritten. However, it points out that a wide range of interested parties were consulted for the green paper, and their proposals are public records.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is also urging Mbeki not to sign the bill, describing it as "unconstitutional in several respects."
The DA cites chapters involving the .za internet domain, critical databases and cryptography as flawed, misdirected and unnecessary. Many of the final clauses do not form part of the green paper process and "appeared in the bill out of the blue", the DA says.
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