The proposed Protection of Information Bill is an exercise in purest futility. The Information Express left the station years ago and simply cannot be stopped. Just ask the Chinese or the American intelligence community.
In the past few days I've overheard, read and engaged in conversations about the new bill that’s currently before Parliament. Some excerpts:
”South Africa is buying a one way ticket to hell.”
“This is the last straw!”
“We're stepping back to the National Party methods of the 1980s”
Calm down, folks. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I agree that the bill itself is dangerous. The fact is, I have a more grave concern that it's a gross miscarriage of intelligence. In my opinion, it’s possibly the dumbest thing politicians have done since Eugene (Terre Blanche’s Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging) invaded Bophuthatswana.
But here’s the thing. It’s not dumb because I think passing it will screw up the country. It's dumb because it’s a massive waste of time. So, don't waste your time worrying about it.
To elucidate, let’s cast our minds back to China pre-2000. The most populous country in the world was a journalist’s nightmare. If you wanted to report a topical story, you literally had to risk your life to get a scoop. Remember Tiananmen Square? Ask a Chinese government official and the standard response would have been “What Tiananmen Square?” Then suddenly something magical happened. They opened up – not because they wanted to, but because they had to. The media suddenly had a free view of the inner workings of previously the most secretive state on the planet, and it was all due to the Internet. News spread at lightning pace because of the social phenomenon happening within China’s borders. (Quick fact: China’s biggest social networking site, QQ, is part-owned by a South African company.)
Take, for example, the earthquake that shook the Chinese province of Sichuan on 19 May 2008. Within minutes, the entire world knew about it. Not only did we most of what was happening, we observed the terror as it unfolded, thanks to videos, blogs, comments and instant messages uploaded via the Internet. Now, contrast this to previous earthquakes in China only a few years before. The Chinese denied they even happened. Furthermore, journalists were too afraid to report anything due to information restrictions not dissimilar to what is being considered now in South Africa. Nowadays, China is painfully realising that those kinds of restrictions are futile.
The same thing happened during Kenya’s election riots. News (defined as information that’s new) was provided not by the big media companies, but by ordinary folk with cellphones taking photographs and uploading blog posts.
What the people trying to pass this Protection of Information Bill are failing to recognise is that consumption and transmission of information have moved online? Consider that between 2004 and 2009, readership of newspapers worldwide dropped by 17% and magazines by 6%. During the same period, the time people spend digesting online media increased by 117%.
The hotheads in Parliament would do well to watch “The Boat That Rocked”, the 2009 movie about a pirate radio station which the British government tried in vain to shut down. Should the Protection of Information Bill be passed, online news channels will become like pirate deejays broadcasting from boats off the coast of England. Only this time there will be millions of boats, varying in size (and, of course, quality). If you look at the South African context, all the major news channels have an online entity. There are 10 million people with access to the Internet on their mobile phones. Twitter is growing fast; and there are more than a million South Africans with a Facebook profile. Breaking news is being transmitted via these channels in the form of hundreds of millions of messages, every day.
That’s a lot of information to monitor and suppress.
So, don't stress about The Protection of Information Bill more than you really have to. It would be like stressing about school teachers who want to prevent boys talking about girls; a pointless waste of energy over a pointless decree. The Bill is wrong, for sure, but my prediction is that South Africa's dear leaders will soon recognise the inherent futility in all this nonsense.
Right now, what you should be doing is growing your online profile. Step out of the shadows, digitally speaking. Register a Twitter profile. Sign up for The Daily Maverick daily newsletter. Watch, and share, some YouTube videos. Invite some more friends on Facebook. Join a group. Start a blog.
Restricting information has never worked. It's just not sustainable. It didn’t work in the 1980s for the Nats. It’s not worked in China. It won’t work in South Africa. Our strength is in numbers. History has shown, even before the digital age, that information in the hands of many can't be protected.
Using China as an example, I think the news may be getting out, but is it reaching the people on the ground, in the country?
You would think journalists (?) would by now move on and realise the world is rapidly moving ahead with other issues. Locally, the Department of Mineral Resources is spooking the hell out of foreign capital markets, and internationally, Pakistan is facing a humanitarian crisis, Iran is closer than its ever been to acquiring a nuclear weapon, etc. But I digress.
How refreshing it was to read your column, though. You appear to have some real world, rational insight and thankfully applied that to this debate. You are absolutely right, technology has altered the landscape and governments are indeed limited as to their efforts to suppress the dissemination of information. Wikileaks has shown us that most recently.
Bravo to the Daily Maverick for continuing to expand your 'Opinionista' offering. I was beginning to fear we would have to hear from the same people, with their very predictable ideas on a weekly basis.
However, the Protection of Information Bill remains a grave threat to investigative journalists and their sources - and they deal with information that has to be uncovered first, before it can be disseminated.
We need to protect the legitimacy of this necessary activity, since it will be suppressed otherwise.
While most information is distributed via ANCTV, and via the latter day equivalent of Der Sturmer or Pravda, due to be inflicted on the population in September, Internetting is limited to the Twitterati, who read newspapers anyway.
Perhaps if we should all use our HP Laserjets to publish Samzidat digests of Internet news in Zulu or Xhosa and speed through the townships tossing them out of the window.
As I say, your points are valid, but while we have only a very limited and well-defined segment of the population Internet aware and Internet users, it will be a bit like farting against thunder.
i'm afraid you have missed the threat of the PoIB entirely:
it is not about inability to publish, but rather about inaccessibility of classified documents - you can have all of the informal channels that you suggest, but if the information is not leaked in the first instance, it will not find its way there
nett effect: where previously we had many (overt) whistle-blowers, we might now stand to have much fewer (covert) whistle-blowers - firstly, the potential relative scarcity of exposed information, and secondly, the severe penalties envisaged will see to this
social and other online media may certainly contribute to providing anonymity, but this will only apply to information that sees the light of day
the core ideas of you article apply (and should have been addressed) to the proposed MAT rather...perhaps consider changing the title of your article to reflect this ?
really ?! and how on earth do you figure that ?
fred,
you’re still conflating/confusing the PoIB with the MAT
i think it is time that you read the PoIB so that you may understand the difference in scope
you can find it here:
http://www.parliament.gov.za/live/commonrepository/Processed/20091112/84004_1.pdf
Lets face it this debate is not reaching people who could put real pressure on government to stop imposing legislation that they are goinf to battle to police anyway.
This could not be further from the truth.
If they can control what you and your family can view on the internet and they control the media, where is our freedom of speech then?
Anyway a synopsis: Porn is used as a stalking horse for gaining control of access to the Internet. It is easy to demonise oppoents of the move as supporting "corruption of our children". No-one wants to stand up in public and say they support Wee Jimmy having unrestricted access to porn.
Implement controls to manage "access to undesirable sites" and the list of undesirable sites can include anything you want.
It would be fairly easy to block local access to the Net, and much easier than in China or Australia where this has been tried. We have very few access points to the rest of the world, currently three major service providers, Telkom (SAT-3 and SAFE), Seacom and Eassy. Force all traffic entering and leaving SA at Belville and Mtunzini to flow through Government firewalls, use denial lists and there you are, management of access to international sites. Locally, require ISPs to direct all traffic through Government controlled nodes operating similar local denial of access firewalls.
It can be done.
I made a similar comment on Ivo's article a day or so back. I need however to disabuse some of the commentators regarding internet access in South Africa - almost everyone in South Africa over the age of 10 has internet access.
I think that the issue is serious because of the intent to muzzle the free flow of information,however futile that may be - but we are in a different era and even China hidden behind the great firewall of china is battling to control the flow of information.
It may be true if you are a scholar in a school with electricity and connectivity that hasn't had it's PCs stolen, if you work in an office that allows you to have personal access to the Net or you you can afford R50 per half hour to sit in an Internet cafe. The bulk of the population in their jondolos in rural areas or townships would have at best dial-up access, wouldn't spend money on it if they had it and anyway don't care about the Net. It isn't very high on their hierarchy of needs.
Having access is not the same as having the desire to use it.
I agree with your second point. There will always be ways to get round firewalls. Maybe Canute Zuma thinks he can, but he can't. Satellite phones are a case in point. They can bypass everything.
Just to reiterate and summarise the main message in this article: the Bill is a waste of time, so don't waste too much of YOUR time worrying about it. I understand the danger to traditional journalists, but the landscape is changing, rapidly. Trying to throttle the flow of information in this day and age is silly. Mainstream news is declining. Online news is growing (yes, in South Africa). Internet penetration is increasing and connectivity is becoming more and more accessible. I believe that online news will soon be more pervasive to broader SA than traditional media ever was. The truth, as they say, will out - whether our leaders like it or not.
I agree that in the Internet age, it is pretty futile to try to limit the spread of news and information, and it is also pretty obvious that the bulk of the ruling party's support base probably has limited access to what our government believes is biased, or inaccurate reporting (JM calls it "rumours dressed up as fact")which again begs the question - so why would the ANC bother?
The opponents of the mooted POiB and MAT are arguably mainly the twitterati, blogging classes, oppopsition politicians and intelligentia - ie not the ANC's core support base.
I agree that the two proposals may possibly be the thin edge of a wedge to attempt to suppress access to Internet / radio / TV that is deemed "undesirable" .
It is also clear that at the very least, the government wants to give the media a fright, so that they self censor / think carefully before investigating and publishing (Wa Afrika arrest).
The fact that they misuse the Hawks (who are supposed to investigate major and organised crime, not harrass journalists) is chilling, as is the unauthorised use of wire tapping (admitted by Mpshe).
I also question the motives of the two proposals POib and MAT - avoid embarrassment? prevent further harm to the International image? Apart from the obvious - hide diodgy tenders, unjustified enrichment etc from scrutiny, of course.
Is this not perhaps a tried and trusted ANC tactic - fly the kite of a potentially controversial proposal and see which way the public and ANC supporter wind blows, then deny that you were seriously going to implement the proposal - you mere merely "starting a debate / discussion"?
Could someone please explain the concept of irony (is there such a word in Pedi, for JM or Zulu?)to the Prez - using Russia as an example in a discussion on media freedom - lol!
Pretty pointless as well if you're tech savvy - TOR, SSL, VPN's etc - but still of concern.
I think these actions are planned to leverage off each other.
I think the comment has merit.
And for the unwashed amongst you (NIA agents included) - Lux Occulta appropriately means Hidden Light. Damn, you guys hid the light...
lxcclt848@gmail.com
But at the same time we need to consider the pace at which this is changing at the technological level. A year or two ago the cheapest cellphone you could buy that had internet access, with wifi capability (this is important because this also can dramatically open up the internet to many), was R1500 at entry level. I have recently checked - you can now get them at R500 and I am sure very soon every poor person in this country will be able to buy one for R200 or less.
But in the meantime the government still has considerable power to control the opinions of a very large part of our population who just happens to also make up their most basic power base. So it comes down to a race against time really. In my opinion we therefore still need to keep up the fight with everything we've got, to ensure that time is on our side. If the government succeeds in the short term they will, I believe, embark on the slippery road down to Zimbabwefication. At that point, the leadership will not care anymore about how damaging their actions are to the country or about the extent to which the rest of the world will be ostracizing us. Nor will they necessarily stop at anything to blatantly and brutally cut all our connectivity off for us.
So to sum up: we're by no means out of the woods yet, but we're getting there...
it seems most commentators do not understand the difference between the two "attacks" - the PoIB (at this stage) seems to be the more dangerous of the two initiatives (and there is less certainty about it's constitutional standing)
http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page72308?oid=194733&sn=Marketingweb+detail&pid=90389
for an informed legal opinion on the PoIB, go here:
http://constitutionallyspeaking.co.za/why-steven-friedman-is-wrong/#comment-34215
the article illustrates the dangers of the bill very well
It does not, however, negate the fact that the Bill is a waste of time. Technology is so pervasive that it will be impossible to prevent incriminating information from being publicized - which is what the Bill aims to do. Practically speaking, anyone with a phone camera is a potential whistle-blower.
Both government's and our time would be better spent on MANY other things. We've just proved that we can hold a world class event as good as anywhere on the planet. I just wish our leaders would focus on using our incredible resources, human and otherwise, on the empowerment of society members - not trying to build flimsy walls around the unstoppable flow of information.
But that does not make the points I or Fred made entirely irrelevant. Actually the internet and other new technologies are going to affect both issues. The 91 000 secret documents on the Afghan War leaked to Wikileaks recently proves this. We are moving more and more into the era of sousveillance of the government by its citizenry in addition to the government's surveillance of us.
I was amazed for instance at the speed at which the National Taxpayers Union organized itself over the Internet by merely making use of the humble email. Being on their mailing list provides me with extremely up to date reliable news on the state of municipalities countrywide and organizes all subscribers into a powerful, ultimately irrepressible, network. They, the subscribers, now report weekly on over 200 disfunctional municipalities. They proved that pollution of water resources, for one thing, cannot be easily covered up anymore. Facebook, where I posted a link to this article for example, is also increasingly playing a role in the disseminating important of important matters quickly. Classifying info will not stop people from disclosing it with or without government approval anymore. The dynamics of the game is changing completely. I really don't think the leadership of this country fully understands the worldwide revolution that's underway ...and as for me, I can't wait for it to happen.
But all this is to a large extent dependent on people's access to the Internet, their computer skills as well as their educational and literacy levels.
classified information will probably get out, but due to the proposed onerous legislation, it will most likely be few and far between
(the wikileaks site serves as a perfect example, but consider the minute percentage of the total volume of classified information that has thus far made its way into the public domain....sure, 200,000 plus communications sounds like a lot, but it really is not that much in the greater scheme of things...and all, as far as the known facts go, from one single source, bradley manning; what now that he is languishing in a military internment camp ?!)
so, where i disagree fundamentally with fred, is where he asserts that the introduction of the PoIB will make even more information available - my question is simply this: if, under the current regime of legislation, we have access to, say 92%, of a set of information, how on earth would the introduction of the bill suddenly ensure that we have access to 93% (or even more!) of the same set of information?
we won't, simple...we will have access to 92% less X (choose any X, if you wish, but i suspect that it will be a high integer)...so fred's position, as it relates to the PoIB is inconsistent with any logical deduction
so, because of fred's confusion between the two initiatives, he focused on the wrong one as a proposed laughing stock - on a site that is supposedly read by "the informed", with few of the informed (not even the editor) picking up on his erroneously conceived (in terms of his headline) opinion piece
the PoIB is the more dangerous of the two initiatives, simply because it would ensure that more information stays secret...period
(also because it is further down the track of becoming an act and its constitutionality is less uncertain - on a bad day it might just pass muster - than the justifiably laughable MAT)
if you must laugh, laugh at the MAT (rather)
When you do nothing as the law changes good citizens into criminals then you encourage the opressor. We are fighting this law not only because of the consequence of not having access to information. We are fighting this law because it is unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional.
I cannot believe you think it is irrelevant. What you are saying is we shouldn't fight the law because it can't be enforced. Whether it can or cant be enforced is absolutely irrelevant. By allowing this bill to pass without kicking up a protest we would basically surrender the idea that the government is there to serve us. They must do what we want. That is what makes this a democracy.
I am totally shocked at your attitude.
I admire you for kicking up a fuss, but it's not my preferred route of action. I'm certainly not suggesting we surrender, I'm merely trying to highlight the foolishness of all this to as many people as possible.
I agree that the law is wrong (I stated it in the beginning of the article), but I'm hoping that somehow our leaders will also see how pointless and counter-intuitive it is. There are so many paradoxes inherent in this Bill that it is laughable to even consider it.
It continues to boggle my mind that they would push for it when most of the rest of the world is moving forward.
Yes I agree that they are stupid for trying to pass it but it scares me that they want to.
My problem is with your haedline - "stop worrying". We can laugh at it sure because it is stupid. But it is also very worrying.