Table Of ContentSTOPPING
THE SPIES
STOPPING
THE SPIES
Constructing and resisting the
surveillance state in South Africa
JANE DUNCAN
STOPPING
THE SPIES
Constructing and resisting the
surveillance state in South Africa
JANE DUNCAN
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright © Jane Duncan 2018
Published edition © Wits University Press 2018
First published 2018
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/12018052156
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES xi
LIST OF ACRONYMS xiii
PREFACE xvii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1 Theorising the surveillance state 21
CHAPTER 2 Is privacy dead? Resistance to surveillance after the Snowden disclosures 37
CHAPTER 3 The context of surveillance and social control in South Africa 57
CHAPTER 4 Lawful interception in South Africa 89
CHAPTER 5 State mass surveillance, tactical surveillance and hacking in South Africa 113
CHAPTER 6 Privacy, surveillance and public spaces in South Africa 141
CHAPTER 7 Privacy, surveillance and population management: the turn to biometrics 165
CHAPTER 8 Stopping the spies: resisting unaccountable surveillance in South Africa 185
CHAPTER 9 Conclusion 205
NOTES 231
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 269
INDEX 275
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Iw ould like to thank my colleagues and comrades in the MPDP, especially Julie
Reid and Viola Milton, for their unstinting support of the work that led to this
book. The Department of Journalism, Film and Television at UJ acted as a host for
the project, and for that I would like to thank the former head of department, Ylva
Rodny-Gumede, and the current head, Dumisani Moyo, as well as the departmen-
tal administrator, Amy Maphagela, and her predecessor, Emmerentia Breytenbach.
The OSF-SA provided funding for the research project that informs this book, and I
thank them profusely for that. The OSF-SA continues to be an unstinting supporter
of work that seeks to strengthen the quality of our democracy, even if this work puts
them on the wrong side of power, and I thank them for their courageousness and
their foresight. In particular, I would like to single out the following OSF staffers
for their support: Fatima Hassan, Allan Wallis and Leonie Sampson. Although they
have now left the OSF-SA, Vinayak Bhardwaj and Michael Moss were instrumental
in ensuring that the OSF-SA supported the project, and I thank them for that too.
My thanks to the Mail & Guardian, Daily Maverick, Sunday Times and open-
Democracy for having carried opinion pieces I have written on surveillance and
privacy in South Africa. I remain indebted to Fazila Farouk, former owner and
publisher of the South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS), which
provided a platform for my early writings on these issues; these opinion pieces
formed the basis of this manuscript. I must also acknowledge the contribution
of Ronnie Kasrils, a former Minister of Intelligence, who acted as a respondent
to my inaugural lecture, which is incorporated into this manuscript. I thank the
APC’s executive director, Anriette Esterhuysen, for the opportunity to undertake
a research project into journalists and communications surveillance, and to allow
me to incorporate some of this research material into this manuscript, as well as
Stephan Hofstatter and Mzilikazi wa Afrika, for having contributed as interview-
ees to this research.
Acknowledgements
Avani Singh, Dale McKinley and Nora Ní Loideain conducted research for
the MPDP for the Privacy International project on privacy in South Africa. The
Privacy International team were unwavering in their assistance when I asked for it
during the writing of this book (and that was often). The Legal Resources Centre
also assisted with information on aspects of the book. I would also like to thank
the following people for agreeing to be interviewed for the book, or for providing
information in response to requests: Gus Hosein, Scarlet Kim, Tomaso Falchetta
and Caroline Wilson Palow, Claire Lauterbach, Matthew Rice, Edin Omanovic and
Alexandrine Pirlot de Corbion from Privacy International; Eric King and Javier
Ruiz from Don’t Spy on Us; James Welch from Liberty; former RICA judge Yvonne
Mokgoro; Sam Sole, Stefaans Brümmer and Karabo Rajuili from the amaBhungane
Centre for Investigative Journalism, Ant Brooks, special advisor to the Internet
Service Providers’ Association (ISPA), Thulani Mavuso from the Department of
Home Affairs, Charles Nqakula, the chairperson of the parliamentary Joint Standing
Committee on Intelligence; Stephan Hofstatter from the Sunday Times; and Wayne
Minnaar and Gert van der Berg from the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police
Department (JMPD), who took me on a guided tour of the JMPD closed-circuit
television (CCTV) control centre. I have also included previously unused interview
material with Dennis Dlomo, then co-ordinator for government intelligence and
head of the National Intelligence Coordinating Committee, conducted at the end
of 2013 at the SSA offices. There are also many interviewees who contributed to the
research and journalism through agreeing to semi-structured interviews or focus
groups, and who cannot be acknowledged by name as they were granted confiden-
tiality as part of the interview process. They know who they are. I thank them for
their courage in speaking out, and hope that in time to come, it will become easier
for people to speak out about the issues touched on in this book, without fear of
retribution. Only once they can do so, can we really say that we live in a robust
democracy.
I would also like to thank SAHA for filing information requests to the City of
Johannesburg, the South African Parliament and the Civil Aviation Authority. The
records these bodies released in response to these requests are useful, although
they were not as comprehensive as they could have been. Lasse Skou Andersen, a
journalist with the Danish publication Dagbladet Information, was also extremely
helpful and I thank him for making some of his records available, released in
response to a series of information requests to the various European Union (EU)
governments.
I would also like to acknowledge the R2K, of which I am a member, and which
has provided me with such a rich intellectual climate for this work. The collaboration
viii
Acknowledgements
between the MPDP and R2K has been an extremely important one, as the MPDP
provides research resources for the activist work of R2K, which strengthens the
work of both organisations: R2K uses the research to undertake informed advocacy,
and the MPDP’s research is put to use, rather than gathering dust on the shelves
of university libraries. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the support of
the Secrecy and Securitisation Focus Group, and especially its convener, Murray
Hunter, who has been unwavering in his support and his willingness to act as a
sounding board. Both he and Heidi Swart read and commented on several chapters,
and I thank them for their attentiveness.
The team at Wits University Press have been extremely supportive of this book
from the moment I approached the press with the initial book idea. I would like
to thank publisher Veronica Klipp, commissioning editor Roshan Cader, project
manager Julie Miller and editor Russell Martin, the two anonymous peer reviewers
who reviewed the manuscript, as well as the entire team that contributed towards
the production of this book.
Sadly, but not unexpectedly, there are those whom I cannot thank as they failed
to respond to interviews or requests for information. For most of 2017, I attempted
to secure an interview with the Minister of State Security, but to no avail. Eventually,
I asked the ministry to delegate the request to a suitable person in the SSA, but still
did not receive a response. They have only themselves to blame if their voices are not
included in this book. The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development
and the office of the Inspector General of Intelligence refused interviews at the time
of request, on the basis that the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism
had filed a constitutional challenge to sections of RICA, and as they were cited as
respondents, they did not want to grant interviews until the case was concluded. I
appreciate their responses, but my position on this matter is that the sub judice rule
is largely an anachronism, in that they would have to prove substantial and demon-
strable threats to the administration of justice for the rule to apply. In any event,
there was no reason not to grant interviews once the respondents had filed their
responding papers as their positions were known publicly, which was the case with
the SSA. I also tried to secure an interview with the National Conventional Arms
Control Committee (NCACC), but was unable to before the book went to print.
Telkom turned down an interview request on the basis that company policy did not
allow its officials to speak on behalf of the company with regard to legislation affect-
ing the sector, and referred me to the Department of Justice: a bit odd for a company
that is meant to operate at arm’s length from the government. A request for them to
reconsider went unanswered. An interview request to Vastech yielded a bland state-
ment, and my follow-up request for an interview went unanswered. While writing
ix
