By Takura Zhangazha*
The recent revelations in the Guardian UK newspaper by
American whistle-blower Edward Snowden, that his country’s National Security
Agency (NSA) has been secretly collecting phone and internet related data of its
citizens has correctly sent shock-waves across the world. Particularly in
Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The levels of debate on the significance of
the unprecedented level of a government allegedly spying on its own citizens or
those of other countries may however not be as comparatively high in Africa let
alone in Zimbabwe. Both in relation to
global outrage or in the defensiveness of local telecommunications or internet
service provision companies.
This would not be because the arbitrary collection of
private citizens data is not an issue but because it may just not be as high a priority
this side of the Equator. To be specific to my own country of origin, Zimbabwe,
it may not really matter at all since there is a general perception that our government
gets information it wants, whenever it wants from phone calls, emails and internet
usage patterns, especially when it is related to politics and not just ‘global terrorism’.
Its only challenge may be in relation to not having the
relevant (or up to date) technology to
snoop around peoples emails and mobile phones. But the will and the intention
are undoubtedly there. And it has tried
to mitigate this by passing on the burden of snooping to the private mobile
phone and internet service providers through legal instruments such as the
Postal and Telecommunications Act and the Interception of Communications Act.
For now, it however needs a warrant to get the private conversations and
correspondences of citizens for use in legal prosecution. At least formally so. We do not know what
data it is collecting about us and whether it is legal. But given the example of
the Prism programme in the USA, our government will probably want to fine tune
whatever version of the same it has in place. Until such time a whistle-blower
informs the media and the public.
But apart from the ‘big brother’ state that we might have in
Zimbabwe, the developments in the West are important in so far as they offer us
a chance to reflect on our own internet and telephony usage vis-à-vis government
policy and business models. I am sure that our national mobile telephony and
internet service/access providers will be the first to state that they would never permit our
government to do anything similar to what has occurred in the USA. That would
be only if they were keen on democratic values as opposed to profit.
The more urgent matter however is the fact that Zimbabwean
society, while not being as connected via the internet as that of the USA, must
also have a debate as to how it tackles the challenge of freedom of expression,
individual privacy and new information communication technologies (ICTs). This is because either way the inter-connected and ubiquitous phenomenon that is mobile internet is coming to all of Zimbabwe’s
citizens.
It may cost more now, but invariably it will get cheaper and because
in economic parlance, our market is small, it will diversify in use and
societal import sooner rather than later.
And government will want to control it not just in order to raise
revenue as it does when re-licensing mobile telephone companies, but to
manage political and social discourse in a partisan direction.
This is however a debate that has had limited little takers within
the ambit of placing ICTs in direct correlation to freedom of expression,
access to information and the protection of privacy. The new Zimbabwean constitution
though recognizing all of the above cited in its bill if rights has the
overarching inference of the same being violable in relation to national
security, public interest as well as public health in Section 86 of the new constitution. This, apart from a lack of the citation of the word ‘terrorism’,
is a framework that will continue to give the government (and the information industrial
complex) leeway to access individual citizens phone and internet records until
such a time a court or act of parliament prevents it.
When this framework is analyzed further, the political
culture that informs it is more to protect the state than to promote either
freedom of expression or the citizens right to privacy within the context of
ICTs and their usage. It is also a culture
that has sought to look at ICTs from ‘safe usage’ perspectives such as
development paradigms as the one that must be most promoted. And in part this
is why our government’s ICT policy has tended to remain non-responsive to the
massive technological advances in the same field and within the national
context.
The major challenge and lesson that the NSA Prism spying
scandal has for Zimbabwe are that we have to manage our integration into the World
Wide Web with greater caution and with a firm understanding of the democratic significance
of the triumvirate rights of freedom of expression, access to information and
the right to privacy. While this must be done taking into account lessons
learnt from other countries (such as the USA), our pretext must also be contextual to our
societies needs and with particular emphasis on our current freedom of
expression and access to information socio-political deficit.
Whereas the ‘whistle blowing’ organisation Wikileaks’ impact on our politics was much more direct (and more political), Edward Snowden’s
revelations impact on us in relation to our own democratic values and
principles. Its not so much what has occurred in the latter's country, but what will most likely occur in our own that is even more important.
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity (takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment