Cape Town - The proposed Protection of Information Bill is to be overhauled to make it easier to understand and eliminate any confusion that might arise, the Minister of State Security Siyabonga Cwele said in Parliament today.
Cwele said certain broad and vague definitions had to be dropped from the body of the Bill.
"In this regard, the concepts of 'national interest' and 'commercial information' amongst others will be removed," he said, adding that proposals would be submitted to the adhoc committee overseeing the drafting of the Bill.
He said the specific areas of information that the government seeks to protect must be clearly identified and explained.
"We have proposed that in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act, Act 2 of 2000, there is already information that cannot be made available to the public. This is the information we seek to protect. The second area of the information that requires protection is that which forms part of the state security information, which, notably, no one disputes it should be protected. This includes such information as intelligence, defence and security related information," said Cwele.
He added that the chapters needed to be re-arranging and the sections that deal with key provisions needed to be re-aligned.
"We are on record indicating that it is our intention to address those areas of concern perceived to be broad and vague in the Bill. This is an effort to ensure that we emerge with a Bill that empowers us to deal with the challenges referred to herein above," said Cwele, adding that more work lay ahead and that the department had pledged its support to the committee in this regard.
Cwele said the Bill was a necessary tool that government required to tackle growing challenges such as espionage, information peddling and the protection of critical databases in government through cyber crime.
The nature of crime had changed and the country was no longer just faced with for example the hijacking of cars or even buildings as was the case in recent years in central Johannesburg, but had now moved to the hijacking of whole companies.
Cwele was referring to the infiltration of Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office (Cipro), by criminals who were able to set up shell companies under the same name as that of registered companies, to appropriate thousands of rands in tax rebates.
"We believe that like many other democracies, there should be secrets, but that those secrets must not be there to promote certain personnel or limited agendas. Those secrets should be there to protect the very same democracy," he said.
Cwele said the media seemed to hold "preconceived views" about the intentions of the bill and that the government was concerned about the image of the country that had been created by these articles.
