Info bill will make spies' work harder: minister

Foreign spies who found it easy to access information in the past will not be happy when the protection of state information bill is passed, State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele told MPs on Tuesday (24 January 2012), according to News24.com.

"If I am a foreign spy - any legislation which makes my work harder won't be nice for me," Cwele told the National Council of Provinces ad-hoc committee dealing with the bill. Information peddling was a "growing cancer" and laws did not exist to fight it, he said.

The department's acting director general Dennis Dlomo told the committee that the bill was not meant to hide information from South Africans. "We are not hiding it from our fellow South Africans... We are hiding it from those who are trying to harm our national interests," Dlomo said. "It is not as complicated as it is sometimes made out to be." Minister Cwele added that South Africa had to learn from other countries when it came to protecting state information. "This is a growing cancer and we don't have the legal [remedy] to deal with it," he said. "We have to learn from the experiences of other countries. We have to learn how they have dealt with their challenges."

Dlomo said further that, if the head of an organ of state came across wrongdoing and the information was classified, they would be obliged to declassify that information. "This bill seeks to balance the need to maintain secrecy wherever and whenever necessary," he said. News24.com reports that the The National Council of Provinces' (NCOP's) public hearings on the bill, passed by the National Assembly last November, are due to start in February.

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