Make Profit Not War

Roger Hislop

We have a new Telecommunications Minister. We have a new man heading up the department tasked with ensuring that South African individuals and businesses communicate with each other freely and cheaply. The ministry that chooses the councillors that staff the regulator that sets sensible policies timeously, in an environment conducive to growth and development, of businesses and of local expertise.

In some dream world.

Instead, we have got a man with no history in telecoms that was instrumental in pushing through the highly irregular acquisition of billions in weapons in a secretive process. He takes a job almost defined by an acrimonious relationship between government and industry, and a regulator that alternates between clumsy nose-poking-into-things-it-should-leave-to-the-market and timid vacillation.

But that’s South African politics, and South African telecoms. Nothing new there.

By far the greater concern is that he is a military mind. A mind that could wreak havoc not only on the growth of our telecoms industry, but on our freedoms and privacies.

The military mind is bred on a diet of paranoia and is obsessed with control. Which is fine and good when it comes to defence, security and war. It’s not fine and good when it comes to the right of legitimate businesses and law-abiding citizens to go about their business.

What is the actual Rand cost of a small handful of criminals using cellphones to manage their henchmen, versus the actual Rand benefit of millions of South Africans growing the economy and earning money? Think RICA. What is the actual risk of a crazy terrorist doing something unspeakable to innocents versus the actual reality of millions of us living in relative peace and security? Think PATRIOT Act.

Security against vague threats must be balanced against the vastly more important right to earn a living, grow your business, engage in any lawful activity you choose without onerous regulation or sweeping violations of your privacy.

The creep of Orwellian policies are a very real danger for us in South Africa. In two of the safest countries in the world, zealous control-obsessed politicians are not only telling consenting adults what is or is not good for them, they are also constructing a massive, all-powerful system to monitor what they do.

In the UK, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has an obsession to not only control the Internet, but also sneak back-door regulations through to create a surveillance society. If you have any doubts as to how far the UK government wants to take it, a key programme is called “Mastering the Internet".

After massive protest, she backed off from plans to create an all-knowing government database of every Internet mouse-click, only to reintroduce it as a requirement for ISPs to do it instead.

And then we have the Great Australian Firewall, the “someone think of the children” filter that will keep Australians safe from paedophiles, child porn… and well, whatever gets added to the secret blacklist by unknown censors. The plan was recently scuttled by political opposition, but comms minister Stephen Conroy is anything if not persistent. It will be back.

So we return to our new Minister. To the military mind, security is the ultimate objective. Gathering intelligence is the highest priority, and assuming the worst the best-case scenario. Throw in vague ominous rumblings about terrorism and child abuse, and rationalising more government controls becomes overwhelming.

Which will bring more of a twinkle to the eyes of a military man – grappling with the complex and subtle intricacies of spectrum sharing and Net neutrality and local loop unbundling, or fiddling with the Regulation of Interception of Communications laws? Supporting new telecoms entrepreneurs, or ploughing resources into attempts register all SA’s mobile users?

Siphiwe Nyanda is only days into the job, so speculation is premature – but it’s vital that the telecoms industry, telecoms consumers and business groups start lobbying the ministry now to make sure our new political leaders understand that telecoms thrives only in a free market – free of interference, free of onerous legislation, free of censorship, free of paranoia and obsession with security.

Please, Comrade Minister, leave behind the interventionist habits of your predecessors, whose policies hurt both business and the poor, cost us billions in infrastructure investments that were never made, and ten years of Internet development. Leave behind the military mind, and the mindset that suits the waging of war. Embrace telecoms positivism – that a growing economy, cheap communications and gainful employment will do more to reduce crime and poverty than any number of regulations.

Leave the paranoia and military mindset to the Minister of State Security and Minister of Police and Minister of Defence. That’s their job. It’s no longer yours.


 

• 2009/05/21
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