Should the Bill be split into two laws?
Below is a briefing paper on the Protection of Information Bill, prepared for the Nelson Mandela Foundation, released on 17 June 2011. The briefing raises questions over whether “emergency surgery” on the Bill can be fully effective, and argues “the current amendments to the State Information Bill are at odds with its fundamental design”, suggesting the Bill needs to be redrafted from scratch.
Note: one oversight can be found on page 27:
Accountability of the intelligence agencies. A core demand of the R2K Coalition is that the Bill should not “exempt the intelligence agencies from public scrutiny”. There is nothing in the current draft of the Bill that would have the effect of exempting organs of state … from public scrutiny in terms of the existing statutory and Constitutional regime.
This makes no mention of Clause 43, the clause which prompted our demand that the Bill “not exempt the intelligence services from public scrutiny”. Clause 43 says that anyone who has information relating to a “state security matter” will get up to 15 years in prison for distributing it or keeping it. i.e. A complete veil of secrecy on the work of spies.
