Politics.za

Picture it. April 2006. Telkom has been successfully gouging SA consumers for 10 years. Finally the Minister of Communication has woken up, 5 years too late mind you, and a brand new Electronic Communications Bill sits on the desk of the President ready to be signed (we’ll ignore the fact it’s been sitting there for 4 months) into law and, hopefully, reshape the telecoms market to finally allow viable competition. This new bill will require that ICASA be a strong and capable regulator with the correct expertise and experience to ensure that the citizens of South Africa receive the best possible outcome in the telecommunications arena.

Which is why it’s a perfect time for ICASA staff to dash for the door, you know, before they actually have to do some serious work.

I think it’s time to get ’ Pallo Jordan ’ on their asses.

As of the 10th of March the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act of 2002 requires all providers of crytpographic services to register with government.

The law seems to have been so badly written no one actually knows who qualifies as a ‘provider’. Banks provide encryption to their clients via SSL, must they register?

It is not abundantly clear, he says, whether the requirements apply only to vendors “selling” cryptography products or services to others such as Symantec, McAfee or Verisign or whether it could possibly also apply to companies “using” cryptography in the provision of services to clients.

That’s how I like my laws. Unclear and ambiguous.

One of the requirements seems to be that if you have access to the source code of a crypto application you must register, which means almost every open source software contributor in the country will have to register. What large scale application, especially a network based one, doesn’t use some encryption somewhere along the line? And if multiple people have access to the same code base, like OpenSSH, who must register? Just one? Everyone?

The fact remains that all this law seems to do is add yet another layer of beaurecratic red tape to businesses in the ICT sector. The argument that this will help law enforcement is also a bit absurd. Does government really think criminals will get their crypto from a registered provider?

When you live in a country where 2 million people have had their phone lines disconnected because of an inability to pay even for the most basic telecommunications, where the cost of broadband (or as we like to call it “fraudband”) is 1000% more expensive than similar services elsewhere and where the newly appointed CEO of the government sponsored monopoly says in an interview :

I don’t buy the issue around our costs being appalling

Then it’s time for someone to do something.

Ivy? Roy? Are you there? ICASA? Anyone willing to do something? Anyone at all?