Recent cases of spying involving the mayor of Cape Town and a report alleging a conspiracy to bring down the government are part of apartheid ”baggage”, Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils said in Cape Town on Tuesday.
”This is a very serious issue and clearly emanates from the kind of baggage we carry from the past,” he told a press briefing on the future of the criminal justice system.
While acknowledging that not all National Intelligence Agency members are ”angels”, he said it is a ”knee-jerk reaction” to assume immediately that the agency is behind such cases.
He said there is currently a great deal of international espionage and that South Africa is not impervious to this. Earlier this month, a Chinese engineer at United States space agency Nasa was arrested for allegedly passing information about US rockets to China.
Two Bills expected to be tabled in Parliament this year are the Protection of Information Bill and the National Strategic Intelligence Amendment Bill. This will be done in the interests of the public and the state, he said.
According to a statement issued at the briefing, the former would make it illegal to disseminate false information aimed at undermining statutory national intelligence structures.
”In addition, the Bill aims to fill the existing legal gap in relation to threats faced by the state in the course of intelligence gathering by unauthorised entities where the security of the state may be undermined.”
The National Strategic Intelligence Amendment Bill would allow for surveillance, to protect the ”law-abiding public”.
”It will strengthen controls and regulations relating to the interception of communication,” read the statement.
The Bill would allow for a national communications centre to ”collect and analyse signals” in accordance with national intelligence matters adopted by the Cabinet. — Sapa