‘Snooping’ Bill may face legal challenge

The Bill, which is before Parliament’s Justice Committee, seeks to regulate the industry, particularly cellphone companies, in an attempt to provide an instrument to combat crime. At issue is the complete registration of all cellphones, their SIM cards and other identification numbers, along with the full names and addresses of those buying cellphone services, contract and prepaid. Heavy penalties are provided for cellular service providers who fail to obtain and verify the personal details of all who are connected on their networks. A further concern for cellphone companies which have been selling prepaid services from a wide variety of formal and informal outlets is the cost implication and the practical difficulties associated with registering prepaid customers. Another provision being considered would allow the licence of a telecommunications service provider to be revoked in the case of a second conviction. Full Business Day report

A Business Day editorial poured scorn on the proposed legislation, saying that it was ‘a foolish Bill’ with ‘several glaring faults’. Not the least of them was that it was unlikely that a terrorist would stand in ‘an extremely lengthy queue’ to declare a cellphone and have it registered on arrival. Not even the ‘paranoid US and equally nervous British governments’ had gone so far. The proposed system will ‘inconvenience everybody and thwart nobody’, the newspaper noted, adding the ‘sheer lunacy’ of the Bill was revealed in its suggestion that the licence of an erring service provider could be revoked. Since such licences are granted by the Independent Communications Authority, this might be illegal – potentially derailing the Bill as constitutionally unsound, rather than because it is ‘clearly nonsense’. Full Business Day editorial