The Institute for Public Policy Research has called on lawmakers to ensure the draft Cybercrime Bill ensures that the protection it aims to provide is balanced, reasonable, and achieved through constitutional means while upholding the principles of the rule of law.

IPPR research associate Frederico Links made this call while launching the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) Forum on Mainstreaming Human Rights in Cybercrime Law and Policy in the capital last week. 

“We implore our policymakers to identify the numerous constitutional rights and freedom this Bill will breach and to then continue to engage civil society, the Namibian public,” Links said.

He said in its current form, the Bill does not address some legitimate issues of concern, such as cyber hacking and child pornography, but the powers provided to the government to access private information in the process are largely unlimited.

“Once the government uses this power to obtain otherwise private data and communications, there is no remedy, for the data would have been accessed and possibly distributed already,” he said, adding that a court cannot be approached to interdict the government from accessing data as the process up to such point of access is done in secret, unknown to any affected person.

Government has been in the process of drafting cybercrime legislation with various drafts of the cybercrime law having surfaced in the public since 2013, and one even having been briefly tabled in parliament in 2017 before being withdrawn. 

Earlier this month, Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MICT) executive director Mbeuta Ua-Ndjarakana told IPPR that the Bill was scrutinised at the Cabinet committee last year and it was referred back to the ministry and a government legal drafter who has drafted this Bill from scratch. 

According to Links, there is little safeguard against government surveillance of private citizens and organisations for possible sinister reasons. 

“We urge policymakers to revisit the Bill and reconsider issues left out,” he said. He also called on government to prioritise the country’s acceding to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime.

“The crafting and drafting of the eventual substantive Cybercrime Bill should incorporate multi-stakeholder consultative processes towards meaningful inclusivity,” said Links.  “The legal drafters should use the Namibian constitution’s bill of fundamental human rights and freedoms (chapter three) as their guide in crafting human rights respecting pro-visions of the eventual substantive Cybercrime Bill,” he advised. - ktjitemisa@nepc.com.na