The lobby group Right2Know has called on government to close legal loopholes that it said had allowed police to track the cellular information of tens of thousands of South Africans.
R2K issued a lengthy statement on the matter on Wednesday after analysing information obtained from the country's main cell-phone service providers.
Spokesperson, Murray Hunter, said their aim was to understand how a legal loophole had allowed surveillance operations to take place using the Criminal Procedures Act, rather than the RICA law.
Hunter said RICA was meant to be South Africa's primary surveillance law which requires law enforcement and intelligence agencies to get the permission of a special judge before any surveillance can be carried out.
“It requires law enforcement and intelligence agencies to get the permission of a special judge, appointed by the president, to intercept a person's communications. In order to apply for this warrant, they need to provide strong reasons because such interceptions threaten peoples' right to privacy so much,” he said.
Hunter said however that policymakers had wrongly assumed that the information about the communication (such as the identity of who you have communicated with, when, and your location) was less sensitive than the content of the communication.
“This, has led to a 'loophole' in the country’s surveillance laws, section 205 of the Criminal Procedures Act allows law enforcement officials to bypass the Rica judge to get access to get one’s phone records – who you have communicated with, when, and where.”
“According to this law, any magistrate can issue a warrant that forces telecoms companies to give over a customer’s call records and metadata,” said Hunter.
“Policymakers are wrong to assume this information is less sensitive or private than the contents of the communication: metadata can reveal as much, if not more, about a person's contacts, interests and habits than what they say over the phone or in a text message,” he added.
Hunter said when a person's communications information is handed over using the Criminal Procedures Act, they are never notified, even if the investigation is dropped or if they are found to be innocent.
He said in on case, SAPS Crime Intelligence officer Paul Scheepers, faces charges in the Western Cape for allegedly using this legal loophole to “spy on the communications of various people who were not under legitimate investigation.
Hunter said their analysis of data released by Vodcom, Cell C and MTN, had shown “that, at a minimum, law enforcement agencies are spying on the communications of at least 70,000 phone numbers each year.”
