E-Snoop Law Review

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

South Africa published in November a discussion paper,
"Review of Security Legislation" on electronic surveillance law
in several countries -- South Africa, US, UK, France, Germany, 
the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and Hong Kong, with detailed
review of legislation of the last two -- as a basis for new 
legislation to protect against latest intrusive technology, or, 
rather, to restrict its usage to government agencies:

   http://jya.com/za-esnoop.htm  (364K)

Its comparative review of surveillance law is informative
for the way it lays out the similarity of each country's definition of 
the threat of technology -- somewhat to citizen privacy but more
importantly to law enforcement. It notes variations in privacy 
protection law, and finds, for example, US and UK deficiencies 
in that area even as these countries excell in manufacturing
the evil tools.

Still, South Africa is joining the crowd in tightening controls on
technology by proposing that telecomm providers make their
systems accessible to government (at their own expense), 
emulating the recent US-EU snooping agreement advanced 
by the FBI and Europol.

Thanks to APB for pointing.