Representatives of the SA Development Community (SADC) countries met this weekend in Swaziland to discuss ways in which their cyber legislation could be harmonised.
Issues under discussion included hacking and computer fraud, but the question of privacy was not discussed.
Organised by the Commonwealth Network of Information Technology for Development and the Centre of Specialisation in Public Administration and Management, the conference was aimed at informing permanent secretaries (senior civil servants) and public service directors involved in overseeing IT in government.
One conference delegate, South African IT lawyer Reinhardt Buys, says harmonisation will ensure cross-border enforcement of cyber crimes such as hacking, computer fraud and online scams, allowing for the extradition of cyber criminals. He says if the region employs common standards for the collection and presentation of electronic evidence and freely share such evidence, more criminals will be arrested throughout the region - faster and more successfully.
"Cyber law harmonisation will also prevent forum shopping, where litigants 'shop` for the country in which their case may be strongest before proceeding with litigation," he says.
Maltese cyber lawyer Olga Finkel, who is internationally regarded as a progressive cyber law specialist, informed the delegations on recent harmonisation progress in the European Union (EU) and the lessons SADC can learn from the EU experience.
"Although a number of countries have not yet done anything to enact cyber legislation, most SADC countries are in the process of either developing cyber law policies or drafting the necessary legislation," Buys says.
One shortfall of the conference, Buys feels, was that privacy issues were not discussed. Privacy, especially related to the ICT environment, is particularly important to EU countries and this also governs their outsourcing practices to, mainly, Third World countries.
"Part of the problem is that privacy is only dealt with on a voluntary basis in the South African ECT Act. While there is talk of specific privacy legislation being drafted, we still have a long way to go," Buys says.
SA and Mauritius have already enacted various new laws to deal with the ever-increasing use of the Internet for communication, entertainment and trade.
The SADC consists of SA, Mauritius, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia, Malawi, Zambia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and Seychelles.
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