The South African Internet Industry

["Vortexia" <vortexia@doxx.net>]

Hi, the following is the situation as it stands with the development of
internet in south africa, and how things are being monopolised by 2 groups,
fighting for power, at the cost of the average internet user.

The 2 current groups fighting at the moment for power are the ISPA (the
internet service providers association) and the telecomms company,
guaranteed a monopoly on all telecomms in this country until 2003.  The
fight to date has gone as far as telkom trying to claim that the internet
falls under their telecomms monopoly law and therefore they get a monopoly
on it in this country.  This was rejected by SATRA (South African Telecomms
Regulations Authority) but the internet was still placed as a telecomms
service, subject to the telecomms acts.

Up until this time, the fights between the ISPA and Telkom have not as yet
had much bearing on the average internet user in this country, however
suddenly the hacking scene in south africa emerged, and 3 months ago some
kiddie hackers decided to fdisk a bunch of servers.  Under our laws nothing
could be done to them, but 3 months later they break into Telkom, they do no
damage, just browse around the system, telkom has them arrested etc.

Under our legal system however, their computers were seized, but no one was
actually allowed to view the contents of the harddrives etc on the machines.
Including the fact that even if they were allowed to look on those
harddrives, the data on those harddrives was encrypted according to the 2
hackers.


So to sum up the situation in this country:

Our backbone infrastructure of our internet (the telephone lines and digital
lines etc) are being monopolised by one company that is state controlled
(Telkom)
The hacking scene is rising into the picture fast, and no one is ready to
deal with it yet in the industry
The laws of this country protect no one from anything on the internet

Suddenly though there is a fight to create new laws in this country.

The law currently says the following

A.) You cannot be prosecuted for damaging or erasing data on a machine that
is not yours, due to the fact that all property that falls under the laws
which refer to damaged property, has to be corporeal, computer data is not
considered as such.

B.) You cannot be prosecuted for breaking and entering if you penetrate a
computer as breaking and entering under the current law has to refer to a
physical structure that you break into.

C.) You cannot be prosecuted for violations of copyright if you pirate
international software, and 99% of software in south africa is imported from
outside, this is due to the copyright act of 1978 stating the following:

A Computer program is defined as "a set of instructions fixed or stored in
any manner and which, when used directly or indirectly in a computer,
directs its operation to bring about a result"  A computer program will be
subject to copyright if it is original and if the author is a South African
citizen or domiciled or resident in the Republic, or if it is first
published or mad in the Republic.  Copyright initially vests in the author
of a work but it may be transferred to third parties.

With the above as our current law, there is a move to change various parts
of what is currently law.  Everything they are changing it to seems to be
based on the computer laws in the UK, and certain things from singapore.
They are also looking to form legislation that may or may not allow for
attempted decryption of logs on a harddrive, and the entry of decrypted logs
into evidence, the restriction of encryption in this country, the allowance
for semi-tangible evidence etc etc etc.

My question is, does anyone know where I can find information regarding the
UK laws as regards cyber crime, how the courts handle electronic logs, how
the courts handle encryption in the UK, and if anyone has any comments on
the above I would love to hear them.

Cheers

Andrew Alston
(System Administrator)