A freedom-of-the-press watchdog group has blasted the Zimbabwe government's demand that Internet service providers monitor customers' e-mail messages.
"Racial hatred and child pornography on the Internet should be fought, but it is very important this battle does not reduce the right of Internet users to express themselves openly," said a June 4 statement from Reporters Without Borders, which rates Zimbabwe and its dictator Robert Mugabe among the worst in the world for press freedom. "The proposed phrasing of the contracts opens the way to abuse of this right."
"The contracts" refers to a new Zimbabwean law requiring ISPs to sign contracts with state-run telecommunications outfit Telone, asking the ISPs "to take all necessary measures" to stop transmission of "objectionable, obscene, unauthorized, or any other content, messages, or communications" deemed "inconsistent" with Zimbabwean law – which critics say amounts to codewords for official censorship and repression.
"This puts an impossible burden on ISPs," Reporters Without Borders said, "who are also being asked to judge for themselves what is legal and what is not, when only a court should be doing that."
Zimbabwe's supreme court ruled earlier this year that the country's Post and Telecommunications Act, which gave the government very broad powers to spy on Internet and telephone communications, was unconstitutional. The Mugabe regime also wants ISPs to disclose the origin of "questionable" e-mail messages to Telone and to the government, which RWB denounced as lacking "watertight guarantees built in to protect the privacy of personal messages."
