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SITA a 'state secret'

Nicola Mawson
By Nicola Mawson, Contributor.
Johannesburg, 26 Jan 2015
SITA's status as a National Key Point provides it with upgraded security and protection.
SITA's status as a National Key Point provides it with upgraded security and protection.

Three of the State IT Agency's (SITA's) locations are protected under the National Key Points Act, as protecting the agency against disruption is seen as vital to national security.

However, there is no clarity as to why government thinks this is the case.

The fact that SITA is protected under the Act was revealed last week when the ministry of police decided to abandon its bid to appeal a South Gauteng High Court order that forced it to reveal the list. Three of SITA's locations are cited in the list: its Numerus, Centurion and Beta buildings.

The revelation of the list comes after the Right2Know Campaign (R2K) and the South African History Archive went to court to force the police to comply with an application under the Promotion of Access to Information Act. In a joint statement, the parties say the court ruling "is a small but significant victory towards our efforts of promoting the principles of accountability and transparency within the government".

SITA's inclusion on the list is because government views it as one of its key installations, says R2K spokesman Murray Hunter. He explains state entities make it onto the list when the state believes that if they were disrupted or destroyed, this would threaten state security.

However, SITA, the police and the State Security Agency did not respond to questions asking why SITA was seen as a strategic national asset.

Paranoid government

Hunter notes these installations have upgraded security and protection, and the law makes it a crime to report on security features. However, he notes, there is "very little clarity" as to what criteria are used to determine which government buildings make the list.

The National Key Points Act, which has been in effect since the early 1980s, allows the minister of police to declare state sites that are of national strategic importance, which then gives them protection under the law. It was designed under apartheid to secretly arrange protection primarily for privately-owned strategic sites.

ICT veteran Adrian Schofield notes the fuss around key points is a legacy issue as "the paranoia that existed within the Nationalist government was passed intact to the ANC government, which is why they never repealed the key points legislation".

Schofield adds most of the locations, such as the SA Mint, were an open secret. Yet, he understands the need for SITA to be protected, as it hosts the government's means to pay its employees and suppliers, which would lead to anarchy if the systems failed.

"Now the list is public, we are likely to see some revisions. In the Internet age, should we not expect all data centres and network intersections to be key points?"

IDC analyst Mark Walker also says the duties incumbent on government related to the security arrangements, maintenance and other aspects of a designated key point should also be clarified.

However, Hunter disagrees that an amendment would suffice. He says the law should be repealed because: "There is no place in our democracy for National Key Points and we'll campaign to have the Act scrapped, not amended."

This, says Hunter, is because the "blanket secrecy over which sites have been declared National Key Points has helped officials and politicians to use and abuse the National Key Points Act to undermine our constitutional rights".

Hunter adds: "The secret implementation of the Act, in which decisions are taken behind closed doors in terms of vague and open-ended regulations, has contributed to a worrying resurgence of secrecy."

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