Victory: New Cybercrimes Bill kicks government spies off the Internet (for now)

Yesterday the National Assembly approved a vastly redrafted version of the Cybercrimes Bill. (See the latest Bill here.)

R2K welcomes the scrapping of sections of the Bill that would have given the State Security Minister far-reaching control over the internet.

When it was first tabled in Parliament in 2017, the Bill had two main sections. The ‘cybercrimes’ section, driving by the Department of Justice, created new definitions of some cyber-related crimes, such as online fraud, hacking, and data theft, and created new measures aim to help fight them. The ‘cybersecurity’ section, however, was fiercely criticised for transferring far-reaching powers to the State Security structures, then under former minister David Mahlobo, to ‘police’ the internet.

Essentially, the National Assembly removed this second section from the Bill and made key improvements to the first section.

This should be celebrated as a victory for internet freedom.

In its 2017 version, the Bill gave life to former Minister Mahlobo’s disastrous proposal to regulate ‘false narratives’ on social media – it would have become a crime to share messages deemed to be ‘inherently false’. After sustained public criticism, Parliament ultimately rejected this proposal and proceeded to remove nearly 20 pages from the Bill which granted new powers to the Minister of State Security in the name of ‘cybersecurity’.

These included giving the Minister the power to declare any network, device or server, whether owned by the government or a private entity, to be ‘critical information infrastructure’. This policy would have created ‘national key points’ of the internet, subject to invasive vetting by State Security structures – a nightmare for internet freedom.

We remain skeptical of a few remaining provisions in the Bill that speak to ‘cybercrime’, noting that across the world cybercrime laws have been used to clamp down on freedom of expression online. All the same, the removal of the ‘Mahlobo’ sections is undeniably a victory for internet freedom.

However, if government wants to live up to its pledge to truly protect ordinary people from cybercrime, it must take the following action urgently:

• Implement South Africa’s privacy law! We are outraged that five years after its signing, government still has not implemented the law that would protect the personal information of every single person in South Africa – the Protection of Personal Information Act. The new privacy watchdog which will enforce the law, the Information Regulator, has yet to become operational, meaning that there is no entity to enforce our rights when our personal information is misused or accessed without our permission.
• Bring an end to government spying abuses! While the redrafted Cybercrimes Bill has ended, for now, the State Security structures’ bid to expand their control on the internet, there is growing evidence that security agencies have routinely abused their surveillance powers, including ‘hacking’. This has led to a situation where even high-ranking politicians and government officials fear they are being spied on.

The struggle to create a safe, secure and affordable internet is by no means over. We recognise the contributions made by social justice organisations and independent legal experts which highlighted serious problems in the original Bill.

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