According to an earlier report of Reporters sans Frontières (RSF), Zimbabwe in January 2003 forced all telecom companies to channel their connections through the state-owned company TelOne. "The original motive was financial," says Wessling. "The plan allowed the state to rake in the revenues from the lucrative international telephone traffic. But, of course, such an obligation also opens the door to various additional obligations on telecom providers, such as the forced monitoring of e-mails, because these companies are tied hand and foot to their contract with TelOne."
The section on Zimbabwe of the Privacy International report ‘Silenced: Censorship and Control of the Internet’ (2003) lists examples of the various ways in which the Zimbabwean government is controlling the Internet.
For instance foreign websites which publish ‘potentially alarming reports’ or ‘falsehoods’ are being blocked. Opposition party MDC and also the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum have found it impossible to find a Zimbabwean Internet Service Provider (ISP) willing to host their websites.
China
Monitoring boils down to digitally tapping e-mail messages. Such censorship is divided into two stages, says Wessling. "In the first stage suspicious messages are selected electronically on the basis of catchwords. The second stage entails the actual reading of messages by the censors."
Monitoring is applied all over the world. In China, for instance, the monitoring of e-mails has progressed to an advanced form. It is plainly dangerous to include ‘subversive’ texts in e-mails and contributions to web forums.
By early May 2004, 61 people had been put behind bars in China for sending purportedly subversive Internet messages. Since May 2003, 17 of these cyber dissidents, who advocate greater democracy, have appeared in court where they have been given prison sentences of up to 14 years.
Sniffer programme
Zimbabwe seems not to have reached that stage yet. But monitoring e-mails has indeed started. On-line activists on Kubatana.net suggest for instance to clog up the ‘sniffer programmes’. "The idea is to add a few lines to every e-mail message that will draw the attention of the censors," explains Wessling. "They expect that overtaxing the censor system with all these ‘suspicious’ messages will flood the censors with work and in this way render them powerless."
Such a tactic will turn out futile according to Bits of Freedom, because the censors "will adapt their equipment so that messages to which this text is added will be ignored."
"The solution suggested by Kubatana doesn’t take into consideration that it is very difficult to upset the above-mentioned first stage – automatic selection – by flooding the system," Wessling explains. "As soon as that first stage is turning out too many messages the censors will make the automatic selection process more stringent."
What then can be done to counter the monitoring? The most important thing to do, according to Wessling, is to pay due attention to the plans. "Technically Internet users can encrypt their e-mails, for instance by using PGP. Security tips can be found, among other sites, on the website of Privaterra, consultants to NGOs and others on Internet security.
Read also: Propaganda and Peeping Toms
Marieke van Twillert is freelance journalist and co-ordinator of MediaNews marieke.van.twillert@niza.nl
Bits of Freedom: www.bof.nl
