Parliament’s intelligence committee has quietly given the green light to legislation that could send shock waves through the private telecommunications industry.
The Electronic Communications Security (Pty) Ltd Bill gives the state sweeping powers to procure electronic communications know-how and to expand its financial interests.
Passed by the committee during the recent parliamentary recess, the Bill allows a new parastatal to buy into private-sector companies and to be exempt from provisions of the Companies Act and the Telecommunications Act. Even Telkom has objected to this exemption.
The plan would reverse the trend of state-owned companies reducing their interest in private companies — such as the sell-off of Transnet’s stake in M-Cell.
The Bill provides for the establishment of a company, dubbed Comsec, to “protect and secure certain electronic communications of organs of state against unauthorised access or other related technical or electronic threats”. Comsec, with the state as sole shareholder, will fall under Miniister of Intelligence Lindiwe Sisulu and will cost R227-million to establish.
The Inkatha Freedom Party’s Suzanne Vos expressed concern that the Bill had been dealt with by Parliament’s intelligence committee rather than by the communications committee.
Speaking in the National Assembly, Vos said the communications committee “finds itself caught up in a turf war for the control and manipulation of public and private broadcasting and the telecommunications industry in general. Given the intensely political terrain of this battle, vigilance is required.”
She asked why the Bill was steered through “the safer waters of the intelligence committee — surely less intimately familiar with the subject matter. The stormy seas of the communications committee would no doubt have been a different matter.”
Vos pointed out that critical databases were already protected by the electronic commerce legislation that was recently passed by Parliament.
African National Congress MP Sue van der Merwe reassured Telkom, which is about to be privatised, that the new company would not affect its business. She described it as “a shield system for communications”.