{"id":341219,"date":"2019-09-16T11:50:27","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T09:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=341219"},"modified":"2019-09-16T11:50:27","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T09:50:27","slug":"high-court-finds-that-south-africas-surveillance-act-rica-is-inconsistent-with-the-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/technology\/341219\/high-court-finds-that-south-africas-surveillance-act-rica-is-inconsistent-with-the-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"High Court finds that South Africa&#8217;s surveillance act RICA is inconsistent with the Constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The South Gauteng High Court has found that parts of the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information (RICA) Act are unconstitutional.<\/p>\n<p>In April 2017, media group amaBhungane filed an application in the High Court challenging the constitutionality of the act.<\/p>\n<p>This, after it emerged that journalist Sam Sole\u2019s communications were intercepted while he was reporting on the corruption investigation against former president Jacob Zuma.<\/p>\n<p>In a decision handed down by judge Roland Sutherland on Monday (16 September), the court found that the law was inconsistent with the constitution on a number of points including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The act fails to adequately prescribe the procedure for notifying a person whose information has been intercepted;<\/li>\n<li>The act fails to adequately prescribe the proper procedures to be followed\u00a0 when state officials are examining, copying, sharing and sorting through data\u00a0 obtained through interceptions;<\/li>\n<li>The act fails to adequately address situations where the subject of surveillance is either a practising lawyer or a journalist.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>To remedy these issues, the judgement adds a number of new sections to the RICA Act to remedy the above issues.<\/p>\n<p>It also suspended the invalidity of the act for two years to allow for parliament to bring the legislation in line with the constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Civil society group Right2Know said the judgement means that bulk surveillance activities are now unlawful and invalid in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We congratulate amaBhungane and the legal team and we are happy that this will bring an end to surveillance abuses,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/334999\/vodacom-wants-to-turn-off-its-2g-service-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Vodacom wants to turn off its 2G service in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South Gauteng High Court has declared the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information (RICA) Act unconstitutional.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":341221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9878],"tags":[11915,26],"class_list":["post-341219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-amabhungane","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341219"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341229,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341219\/revisions\/341229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}