SA Government's Crypto Registration Up And Running

orange writes "Anyone who supplies crypto products to South Africans (and the government defines crypto as almost anything) has to register with the appropriate agency and pay a ZAR2000 fee (US$200). Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time (How they're gonna get you unless you come to South Africa is another story). A copy of the legislation can be found can be found online."

Comments

How are they going to get you?

[gmhowell]

There are these things called 'extradition treaties'. I have no idea what the nature of one (if any) between {US|CA|UK|DE|etc.} and SA is, but it might exist.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't the laws have to be common to both coutries? For example, murder would be a valid reason for extradition but violating the DMCA would not.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Iamthefallen]

I strongly doubt the US will ever surrender a citizen to a foreign court to stand trial.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you honestly think that the US (or ANY 1st world country) will extradite someone to .za over such a flimsy piece of legislation, you're naive.

Remember, this is the same country whose leader believes that HIV does not cause AIDS. Their leaders (and by default, government) are quite obviously insane.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[gmhowell]

It depends wholly on the nature of the treaty. Different ones exist between different countries. For example, if someone commits murder in the US, there is a good chance the Canadians will return the person. But the Israelis won't. Just an example, but it varies.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[gmhowell]

If you honestly think the US government wouldn't turn over a citizen, you are the one being naive. The fact remains that there is a structure, and without knowledge of the exact treaty between the US and ZA, you don't know if the US would extradite the person.

Suppose a serial killer got to South Africa? It's very common to bend treaties and ideas and have a mutual extradition.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[f97tosc]

US/South Africa treaty

Tor

Re:How are they going to get you?

[gmhowell]

You are probably correct. But what I was pointing out is that there is a framework to allow such things to happen.

(personally, I'd like to see the Koreans, Taiwanese, Chinese, Germans, and Canadians put a trade embargo on the US to get... Oh, really anyone... extradited:)

Re:How are they going to get you?

[tomhudson]

Most extradition treaties only allow for extradition where the offence is an offence in the host country.

For example, if you, an American citizen, kill someone in south afric, you can be extradited to south africa because killing someone is a crime in both countries (some conditions apply: see CIA, etc... for exceptions).

However, if you, an American, are accused of the "crime" of "thinking bad thoughts about despot ruler tyrant so-and-so", this is not a crime in America, so any extradition request will be ignored. Or laughed at. Or both.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[shepd]

>For example, if someone commits murder in the US, there is a good chance the Canadians will return the person.

Not always. Canada is _very_ picky about deporting anyone to a country if their crime could carry the death pentaly as a "sentence", such as many US states.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[YrWrstNtmr]

I strongly doubt the US will ever surrender a citizen to a foreign court to stand trial.

bzzzt... US military personnel overseas accused of a crime are frequently tried in the host nations courts. Depending on the particular Status of Forces Agreement, the host nation often gets first crack at them.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Malc]

Canada normally only extradites alleged murders if they get a guarantee that the death penalty won't be used.

For some countries, the people can only be extradited if it is a crime in both countries. For example, if South Africa had an extradition treaty with Britain, they could probably extradite a murderer, but not somebody who has supplied crypto as the latter case isn't (yet) a crime in the UK.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[gmhowell]

Thanks for the link. Thin on details, but at least we know there is one.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

extradition treaty almost always requires that the action must be of a criminal nature in both the countries: where a person is living and where s/he is to be extradited. thus, even if you are an SA citizen in USA, you cannot be extradited for the crypto crime if the said activity is not defined as criminal in USA.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Extradition isn't for all crimes. eg. New Zealand & Australia will trade murder suspects, but not fraud suspects.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[nurb432]

And even if they dont have one today, they might tomrrow..

Re:How are they going to get you?

[slipgun]

Which is why the European arrest warrant is so dangerous. I don't know if it made the american papers, but about 6 months ago there was a row because some Brits, on holiday in Greece, had been handed down sentences of about a year for... planespotting. Now, if they had made it back to Britain, Greek's extradition request would have been lauged at. But because of the wisdom of Our Great European Leaders, any British citizen could now receive a knock on the door at 3am and be hauled away to Greece to face the charge of planespotting. The British Courts would have no say in it, and the fact that planespotting is perfectly legal in Britain is irrelevant.

(No offence intended to Greeks, just using this to highlight the dangers of the European arrest warrant).

Re:How are they going to get you?

[CustomDesigned]

The International Criminal Court will get you. I couldn't find a website critical of the ICC, so I'll voice my objections. Any government can accuse you. There is no Jury. A 3 judge panel decides your fate. Basically, if someone in any government anywhere in the world doesn't like you, you're history. For an idea of how fair the 3 judge panel will be - look at the UN Human Rights Commitee. (Members consist of such salutory champions of Human rights as China and Sudan.)

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Iamthefallen]

Yes, if they are already inside the country, can you imagine an american being arrested in the US, then sent to let's say Japan to stand trial? Ain't gonna happen.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[ColdGrits]

" some Brits, on holiday in Greece, had been handed down sentences of about a year for... planespotting."

Get your facts straight.

They were convicted of SPYING, not planespotting.

They were deliberately photogtraphing Greek millitary bases, having been repeatedly asked many times by the authorities NOT to do so because it woudl be considered spying.

The stupid idiots refused to stop, so in teh end the Greek authorities had no option but to arrest them.

So please, get your facts straight before citing examples!

Re:How are they going to get you?

[tomhudson]

That IS rediculous. Can you imagine explaining to your fellow cons why you're in the clink? They'll beat the ever-living shit out of you. Better to lie and say you're an axe-murderer, or bank robber.

Mind you, we've got some stupidity here (Canada) too. One woman was threatened with jail time for an overdue library book. I received a similar note from the library for a book that had already been returned, but their system was fscked up, and was looking for it under its' sub-title.

Maybe the Greeks got it backwards (insert obligatory ethnic greek "backwards" joke here), and thought that planespotting had something to do with grafitti - painting large circles on planes. :-)

Best regards

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, painting up someone's airplane to look like a Gateway computer box SHOULD be a crime EVERYWHERE!

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better get YOUR facts straight. They were convicted of spying, based solely on their planespotting, which means they were convicted because they were planespotting. At an air show. Open to the public. In other words, at a public demonstration of Greek aerial might, they took pictures. Publicly. Oooh, there's some spying for you!

Stop being an apologist for the Greek government.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

People

Lets let the paranoia settle a little.

Malc is almost right - all extradition requires the crime to exist in both countries.

So if crypto registration is not a legal requirement in the USA, then the USA will not extradite.

Even if it was a crime, it is unlikely they would extradite.

Can we stay on topic please?

Re:How are they going to get you?

[2short]

Whether you strongly doubt it or not, it has, does and will happen all the time. If Canada (for example) presents the US with convincing evidence you murdered someone in Canada, you'll be on the bus right quick. It's known as extradition, and the US has treaties covering it with most countries. They certainly vary in the crimes covered and the evidence required, but never "surrender a citizen"? Wouldn't count on it.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[slipgun]

They were convicted of SPYING, not planespotting.

I was actually taking the piss, but looking back I didn't make it clear enough :-)

Anyway, my point is that they would have received a knock on the door from BRITISH police for this charge of 'spying', within BRITISH territory, with no need for the greek government to prevent evidence. Not to mention the fact that looking at aircraft does not constitute spying in Britain anyway...

Re:How are they going to get you?

[ColdGrits]

Ah, right you are.
Just thought for a moment that you were one of those bozos who were complaning about "how dare the Greeks prosecute them for this" without knowing he facts - there were a lot of those morons in the media at the time in the UK :-(

However, as to your example of the indisious (sp??) and wholly unjust law, I wholly agree with that part.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[User 956]

Remember, this is the same country whose leader believes that HIV does not cause AIDS. Their leaders (and by default, government) are quite obviously insane.

This, of course, in stark contrast to our country, whose leader believes that Africans should, under no circumstances, be educated about how AIDS is spread.

This is the same man that believes, down to the letter, in a book that says women and unborn children are property, among other ridiculous assertions

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Derleth]

For example, if someone commits murder in the US, there is a good chance the Canadians will return the person.

They won't if the person is facing the death sentence. Canadian law prohibits sending someone to face a possible death sentece, so the prosecution has to stop seeking death or the perp can stay in Canada, drinking Molson and watching ice hockey.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

never say "Never"....it never snows in June---it somehow it could. But the changes are even more remote now with the new agreement of the World Court not to extradite US citizens back for "war crimes" trials.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Anonymous Coward]

apparently you have not read of the recent decision that the World Court not be extraditing US citizens for any "war crimes" trials. Besides, if offending some other country's leadership made one "history", there would be a lot of Chinese dissidents in that category.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I couldn't find a website critical of the ICC,

Try USS Clueless. Yeah, it's a weblog, but the guy has many well-thought out arguments against the ICC.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[josh crawley]

---This, of course, in stark contrast to our country, whose leader believes that Africans should, under no circumstances, be educated about how AIDS is spread.

That's NOT what he said. He said that he would not support an orginazation which would advise for "safe" abortions. The Vatican backed him on that. It just happens that "education" fell under that plan.

I'm sure he would OK a plan which would include sexual education: just dont approve the abortion issue.

Still, you're using the same attacks politicans use to fight against another candidate: use a veto on a bill that has good and bad effects. Then focus on all the good effects that the guy threw away with his vote.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[???]

Uhhh... Yeah it is going to happen, and it does happen. By definition, anybody extradited from the United States was in the United States before being extradited. If you commit a murder in Canada, and go back to the States, the authorities will ship you back to Canada to stand trial - citizen or not...

Re:How are they going to get you?

[User 956]

Still, you're using the same attacks politicans use to fight against another candidate: use a veto on a bill that has good and bad effects. Then focus on all the good effects that the guy threw away with his vote.

Ok, so for the sake of argument, lets say first trimester fetuses have "a life".

Now, is it right to sacrifice the lives of grown humans by denying them education and medical support on a life or death issue, so that these fetuses can be born (who, when born, will be affected by this aforementioned life or death issue, and have a fair chance of dying from it then)

People will die either way. Less people would have died had he approved the bill.

And you call this "Pro-life"?

Re:How are they going to get you?

[John Hasler]

The US will not extradite you for doing something which is not a crime in the US.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Tech]

You needn't worry about that. They can't catch the real criminals here yet, and those that they do catch either escape or are released when Mr Mandela has a birthday, as a special present to the country. (It happened, really!)

Re:How are they going to get you?

[neocon]

Yup. It's actually even worse than this, because the treaty explicitly prohibits any court review of the extradition. Whereas before the treaty, someone being extradited from Britain to Greece for something illegal in both nations would be entitled to a court hearing to determine (in Britain) if the request was valid, now not only could he be extradited for something not illegal in Britain, this extradition would have to be done immediately and without court review of any sort.

Live in Italy and violate thew (very strict) British libel laws? Go straight to a British courtroom, with no review of this by Italian officials. Put up a web site in England violating the (again quite strict) Italian blasphemy laws? Go straight to an Italian court, even if you've never set foot in Italy in your life.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[johie]

If any one of you slashdotters are from minnesota, then you might remember a story on one of the news channels about two Minnesotan teenag girls who went to Seoul, South Korea to study, and one teenager got involved in the death of the other, and returned back to Minnesota. South Korea, because of extradition agreements, was able to get the other teenager extradited to South Korea to stand trial for the murder.

Re:How are they going to get you?

[Black Copter Control]

That IS rediculous. Can you imagine explaining to your fellow cons why you're in the clink?

Remember Clayoquot Sound?
The guy in this picture got 45 days and a $6000 fine. For what? Well, it's in the picture -- standing on a road with a sign. You can get less for raping someone with a knife.

Hey

[VultureMN]

Let's get a collection to send Theo to South Africa on vacation!

Re:Hey

[alwyns]

This would be a good deal for his family still in South Africa. They can visit him at the nearby jail and they don't need to feed or shelter him!

Seriously this probably only affects a few big players like IBM and Zaxus (ex Baltimore) who supply solutions that are used in Banking sector. There is at least one local South-African player in the market that will blow anyone else out of the water with both price and performance.

uh-oh.

[penguin_punk]

I just double-checked my logs and it looks like I'll be canceling my winter vacation. Jailtime doesn't appeal to me.

Re:uh-oh.

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Especially a South African prison. 40% of the population has HIV. Don't go drop the soap!

use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[tps12]

This sounds like a terrible law, but it may have a good effect. The MPAA and the RIAA are crypto merchants, since they use schemes like CSS and CD copy protection to try to screw over their customers. But under this law, they should have to pay South America! It'll be nice to Hillary Rosin rotting in prison in Buenos Aires!

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Jahf]

Yeah, because $200 is going to really break the MPAA and RIAA.

Even if it were $200 per title, they would still make it up by selling 20 or so discs. I strongly doubt it's going to be interpretted as $200 per individual copy of a disc.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm. Yo. It's South Africa, not South America.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

SA = South Africa, damn idiot.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Slack0ff]

Hes right, if the government really plays this right they could make a killing off the RIAA, and since the riaa doesnt pay for anything they would possibly just send regular cd's... If this or somthing like this does happen then I can see others hopping on this band wagon, although I doubt the US ever bans the import of encryption... actually, mabey i dont doubt.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would South Africa ship her to Argentina?

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[rmezzari]

Damn, what a dork! It's SOUTH AFRICA, not SOUTH AMERICA, it's ROSEN and not ROSIN, and last but not least, Buenos Aires is not the "capital" or nothing like that of South America, it's not even the biggest city, and to be honest, Argentina sucks (plus it's broken). To be honest, I think that Argentina deserves Rosen.

Damn!

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent only serves to illustrate that tps12 is one of the most consistently high-quality posters on Slashdot. He is one of the community's treasures. Rarely will you find mediocrity in any of tps12's writing, and never will you find incompetence.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Derleth]

It'll be nice to Hillary Rosin rotting in prison in Buenos Aires!

South Africa, numnuggies. Think Cape Town, not Rio.

Besids, it won't happen: The *AAs are rich, powerful groups that could easily pay $200, $2000, or $2000000 to anyone if it meant opening up a market to them.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[fishbowl]

"Yeah, because $200 is going to really break the MPAA and RIAA."

Yes, but, the idea of laws is that they carry enough force to dissuade people from routinely violating them. A party who willfully breaks a law, considering the fines to be merely a cost of doing business, should be punished harshly on the basis of their contempt for the law, regardless of the fine.

If there's a $100.00 fine for dumping, you cannot dump your trash there once a week and drop off a check for $100.00 at the courthouse clerk's office. The willful, repetitive nature of your violation will take on a legal signifigance beyond the scope of the original violation.

In practice, of course, many *do* get away with such practices, but not indefinitely, and not without risk.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Nicopa]

Have you been to Argentina?

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Zathruss]

"It'll be nice to Hillary Rosin rotting in prison in Buenos Aires!"

So when did the South African government start outsourcing their prison needs??

Looks like someone got a little confused... ;)

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[rmezzari]

More than once, it sucks, it's full of snobs who now are piss-poor, but yet somehow still manage to think that they are better than others, all South America hates them. BTW, tango sucks! Not to mention that the football sucks, see last World Cup. And before I forget, Maradona is a fat loser with his nose full of coke.

They deserve what is happening in there.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[Jahf]

My point was that the cost is so low there is no reason for the MPAA and RIAA to break it. They'll pay it and not think twice. Therefor the parent post to mine was not realistic.

Re:use it against the MPAA and RIAA!

[JimFromJersey]

Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.

WTF

[tomhudson]

Of course, if you don't supply them with the key, how are they going to proove it's YOUR product that did the encryption in the first place?

Re:WTF

[thefirelane]

They find stupid users computer:

Stupid user has *.yap files on it, encrypted...

your app makes .yap files when it encrypts things

Don't think that could happen?

I've noticed this trend on slashdot as part of the geek influence no doubt. Repeat after me... things don't have to be mathematically proven to count as proof in a court of law.


---Lane

Re:WTF

[tomhudson]

How about this:

"my app" assigns random file extensions;

They find files that end in .txt, .gif, .mpg, etc.

They look elsewhere...

Seriously, on systems that rely on the filename/extension, this MIGHT be a workable scenario ...

But in reply to your statement that things don't have to be mathematically proven to count as proof in a court of law, they do have to be proven. the standard of proof is:

- in civil courts, the preponderance of the evidence;

- in criminal courts, beyond a reasonable doubt.

A simple way to show that not all .yap files are encrypted files would be to rename a .gif file to .yap. It's not encrypted, and shows that "my app" is not the only way to create such files. They would then have to look for, say, signature bytes in the file header (a la MAGIC filetypes). If there is no header, they're shit out of luck.

This "trend" for geek influence is actually a good thing, certainly better than the tyranny of political correctness that the "Moral Majority" had previously attempted to impose on the "Real Majority", who saw them as a bunch of self-important pig-fucking hypocrites.

Best regards, and thanks for taking the time to point out a potential problem for all those designing new crypto packages :-)

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Because human rights are currently dead and everyone is considered "guilty until proven innocent".

Re:WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said they are going to prove anything?

Re:WTF

[alienmole]

This "trend" for geek influence is actually a good thing, certainly better than the tyranny of political correctness that the "Moral Majority" had previously attempted to impose on the "Real Majority"

Actually, political correctness is a way for an intelligent minority to communicate values to the masses, values which said masses seem incapable of understanding for themselves, such as "do not harrass or discriminate against people of a different race from yourself just because they're a different race".

...who saw them as a bunch of self-important pig-fucking hypocrites.

I'd rather be that, than a Bud-swilling, Survivor-watching, fat-assed moron. Oops, gotta watch my correctness...

Error 3905: Nothing To Copy

[Anonymous Coward]

Please post something so that I may copy it.

Failure?

[njchick]

Failure to supply South Africans without being registered ...

It's more like a failure to write a story without knowing English.

Re:Failure?

[yellowcat]

Ons praat nie engels nie! Hierdie is suid-afrika! (translation: we don't speak english. This is south africa.) Stank vir dank.

Not a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only does this provide a lucrative source of tax revenue from the government, it is a good way to track all usage of crypto, which will make it harder for nefarious minds to plot nefarious deeds.

love that slashdot grammar

[StuffYourReligion]

Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time

OK, I fully expect to fail to supply South Africans with any kind of crypto technology. I also don't expect to be registered. And you're saying I'll go to jail for this? That's crazy!

--
Will I be Boered?

Re:love that slashdot grammar

[tomhudson]

The ed. probably meant:

supplying South Africans without being registered means potential jail time

- but I know what you mean. I was going to comment on this too, but then I saw your post.

Regards...

Re:love that slashdot grammar

[StuffYourReligion]

Errr, please laugh in the appropriate places ;)

Re:love that slashdot grammar

[alwyns]

No, you'll be Moered.

Slashdot

[penguin_punk]

Rule #1 of slashdot etiquette

If you begin to get hammered, point your cname to someone elses machine.

And do it FAST!

Re:Slashdot

[oll]

But they got phones and faxes!

0a. Last Update: Mon Sep 30 21:15:37 SAST 2002
0b. Sender: dns-admin@uunet.co.za
0c. Posted: Sun, 29 Sep 2002 21:08:35 +0200 (SAST)
0d. Subject: UPDATE DOMAIN aspa.co.za
0g. Hist Cnt: 2
0h. Inv Number: 0
0i. Contract: NEW
1a. Domain: aspa.co.za
1b. Action: U
2a. Domain Owner: Eskom Information Technology Services
2b. Owner Postal: P O Box 1096, Johannesburg, 2000
2c. Owner StAddr: P O Box 1096, Johannesburg
2j. Owner Phone: +27 11 203 6075
2k. Owner Fax: +27 11 203 6075
2l. Owner E-Mail: heinz.kollner@arivia.co.za
3a. Opp Date: 2002/09/30 21:15:23
4a. Adm Contact: Kollner, Heinz
4b. Adm Title: UUNET South Africa DNS Administration
4c. Adm Company: Eskom Information Technology Services
4d. Adm Postal: P O Box 1096, Johannesburg, 2000
4e. Adm Phone: +27 11 203 6075
4f. Adm Fax: +27 11 203 6075
4g. Adm E-Mail: heinz.kollner@arivia.co.za
4h. Adm Nic:
5a. Tec Contact: UUNET (SA) Operations
5b. Tec Title: UUNET South Africa DNS Administration
5c. Tec Company: UUNET South Africa
5d. Tec Postal: PO Box 44633, Claremont
5e. Tec Phone: +27 21 658 8700
5f. Tec Fax: +27 21 683 0160

Re:Slashdot

[penguin_punk]

But they got phones and faxes!

And I'd use this for what? Oh. I forgot. I'm supposed to call them with my VISA, right?

"Hi, yes, I checked through my logs and it turns out I had one of your citizens download some ssh source from me. I'm just calling to give you my credit card number so you can bill me the the registration fee."

Thawte Consulting...

[WetCat]

the certificate authority has a headquarters in
South Africa...

Re:Thawte Consulting...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, Veriswine.

Why language skills matter

[itp]

Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time

I don't think that sentence means what the poster intended it to mean.

Ian Peters
itp at ximian dot com

Re:Why language skills matter

[RealAlaskan]

Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time

Obviously, it means that if you supply South Africans to the market [1] all is fine, whereas if you fail to supply them to the market without registering as a non-supplier, you in a heap o' trouble, boy!

[1] I thought slavery was illegal there; they must have relegalized it there once they kicked the whites out. Or maybe that really meant something else entirely? No ...

Re:Why language skills matter

[McCart42]

"Grammar"

Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Why language skills matter

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I don't think that sentence means what the poster intended it to mean.

INCONCEIVABLE!!!

Re:Why language skills matter

[paulcammish]

> Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time

I don't think that sentence means what the poster intended it to mean.

But... what if it does?!?! Ive failed to supply them crypto, AND im not registered...!

In fact, quite a few of us have too, id bet. What are we going to do...? Aggghhhh!

I suppose I could just read the article... what am I thinking, this is Slashdot, must be true... must be true...

/me starts packing his stuff before the SA authorities break down his door...

Re:Why language skills matter

[Tokerat]

For those who didnt' catch it:

In the US, it hasn't been legal to supply South Africans to anyone since the Emincipation Proclaimation was signed. :-D

Re:Why language skills matter

[EngMedic]

I don't think that sentence means what the poster intended it to mean.

un-possible!

South America?

[StuffYourReligion]

Your next assignment: at least read the slashdot blurb before posting, and then study a world atlas.

* What's this about South America?
* You really think a one-time $200 reg. fee (per product, $900 for changes/updates) will hurt the MPAA or RIAA?

Re:South Africa: White Genocide

[Anonymous Coward]

Jan. 1, 2050 will be a sad, sad day indeed. :-(

I'm a South African Cowboy

[Anonymous Coward]

telnet someone.sa 25
220 someone.sa ESMTP
mail from: cbneal@slashdot.org
250 ok
rcpt to: mendella@someone.sa
250 ok
data
Dude,
Please find attached the rot13 crypto program you requested.
Peace,
.
quit

What about credit card numbers?

[jc42]

The obvious intent of all this is to make people pay the registration fee for every browser they may have on any machine. Otherwise, if you even accidentally download an encrypted page, i.e., you make a credit-card purchase over the web, you are risking a jail term.

Of course, the obvious thing is for vendors to supply Windows machines that don't have any encryption installed, so that the vendors don't have to pay the registration fee for every sale. This is likely to lead to a situation where credit-card orders are sent unencrypted. The SA spammers will love this.

People keep talking like encryption is some military or law-enforcement topic. But the main use of encryption these days is to prevent the interception of commercial information. The fact that restrictions on encryption will make financial data easily available is not necessarily accidental. The goal could very easily be a desire on the part of the government to have easy access to everyone's financial transactions. Such information has a lot of political uses.

Re:What about credit card numbers?

[gleffler]

In standard /. "I never need to read the articles" mindset, this argument is totally irrelevant. *Suppliers* of crypto have to register, not users, and *Suppliers* only have to register once. $200 to MS to give away Internet Explorer in South Africa is a drop in the bucket.

Re:What about credit card numbers?

[SirSlud]

> In standard /. "I never need to read the articles" mindset

Thats because some of us dont have to read the articles not to make wild crazy silly illogical assumptions.

I didn't read the article (seems /.'d), but my BS detector went BEEP BEEP when I read his post. :)

classic 1) 2) ??? 3) PROFIT!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

1) supply crypto products to South Africans (and the government defines crypto as almost anything)
2) register with the appropriate agency and pay a ZAR2000 fee (US$200).
3)Or, Fail to supply South Africans without being registered and get potential jail time
4) ???
5) PROFIT!!!!

Re:classic 1) 2) ??? 3) PROFIT!!!!!

[grumpygrodyguy]

1) supply crypto products to South Africans (and the government defines crypto as almost anything)
2) register with the appropriate agency and pay a ZAR2000 fee (US$200).
3)Or, Fail to supply South Africans without being registered and get potential jail time
4) ???
5) PROFIT!!!!

More like:

1) Monopolize the diamond industry, and lie about the scarcity of diamonds to artificially inflate thier value.
2) Strongarm the SA government into enforcing strict crypto law(so DeBeers' secret will never get out)
3) PROFIT!!!(for many many more years to come)

Did someone mod this up funny? Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up funny. Yes, I know it's a metatroll. Deal with it.

LOFL

[Raul654]

Hrmm... I knew investing in those slave-trade stocks was safer than investing in .bombs. This only reinforces that belief.

unlikely

[ruebarb]

given the strained relations SA had with the US/UN/world at large (killing your majority black citizens with police raids has the habit of turning people against ya...) - I highly doubt any extradition treaty exists...

besides, if there were, we'd just extradite all lawbreakers instead of waiting for them to come to the US (like Dimitry) -

dumbasses...taking a page from the early 90's again.

RB

Re:unlikely

[Anonymous Coward]

now there's an intelligent comment.
do you even realize that the black majority has been in power for almost 10 years? please don't write silly parentheticals about countries you have no idea about. it annoys us South African's quite profusely.

nevertheless, I agree with the fact that this law is about as brilliant as your comment.

New business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Charge something for nothing
2. Profit!!!

Is this an attempt at an embargo?

[ziggy_travesty]

There are only a couple of scenarios in which this makes any sense to me: 1. The SA gov't is trying to create an embargo on the importation of crypto in order to spur domestic development of crypto. 2. The SA gov't believes that if they know who is distributing and receiving crypto, it will make things easier for them to track and quash any political uprising that may come as a result of a particular group having the ability to communicate securely. I really don't think I understand why govenments are still concerned with crypto regulation. Even the NSA is finally easing exportation laws. Even Bruce Schiner (Atlanitic Monthly, Sept. 2002) has revamped his whole philosophy on crypto since Applied Cryptograpy was released...a very interesting article.... -me

Re:Is this an attempt at an embargo?

[wirelessbuzzers]

1. The SA gov't is trying to create an embargo on the importation of crypto in order to spur domestic development of crypto. Unlikely, the fees apply to local stuff as well. And foreigners are better able to pay them.

The SA gov't believes that if they know who is distributing and receiving crypto, it will make things easier for them to track and quash any political uprising that may come as a result of a particular group having the ability to communicate securely. Also unlikely, they could use very rudimentary, but nonetheless worthwhile, crypto that came with their computers (i.e. ssh/sftp, ssl, etc.) This would be innocuous, because lots of people use ssl and the like.

It seems more likely that the government is just paranoid and technologically illiterate. You would expect more of them, but the US government did (and is still doing, see my sig) similarly silly stuff, and SA does not exactly have a track record for having an enlightened government.

The registration form is here..

[robbo]

Registration form.
I think I'll register my Wheaties Secret Code ring..

New Debian section

[jojor]

well, that might cause a re-naming of debian's "non-US" section into a "non-US-non-SA"

how I hate to keep changing my sources.list...

Re:New Debian section

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, last I checked, South Africa was not a part of the US, and hence would fall under 'non-US'. Why add the 'non-SA' qualifier?

Re:New Debian section

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and it's not in South Africa either, therefore 'non-SA' is necessary also. Just having 'non-US' could include places like South Africa, which is wrong.

and..

[Anonymous Coward]

Nigga plz!

We will show them

[Slack0ff]

HA Slashdotted them... cant even veiw the PDF. That will show them to do somthing so stupid... or mabey it will show them they could use a update or equipment. But eitherway they will learn...

In other news...

[bobdotorg]

JOHANNERGURG (Rueters) - Bazooka Joe was arrested and being held without bail for posession of decoder rings with intent to encrypt.

Darn! Darn, darn DARN!

[E-Rock-23]

Guess I won't be making millions on my super-secret MI6-type gung-ho classified Microsoft-Monopoly licensed Crypto-Magic 5000 All-In-Wonder program for encrypting Slashdot Sig files. And South Africa was my number one target market, too...

Oh, wait... BrainRAM (TM) fried again. You may now return to your regularly scheduled thread...

Great...

[coene]

More over-zealous governments that think cryptography is the tool of the devil... thats exactly what the world needs right now. Isnt Crypto export tough enough already? (from the U.S. that is)

Re:Great...

[Smitedogg]

Isnt Crypto export tough enough already? (from the U.S. that is)

Horribly so. My fiance is a South Korean national, and according to the law I can't let her read any of my cryptography books, talk about it, or let her see the source code to any algorythym. It's ridiculous to have a silly book like "Applied Cryptography" and not be able to show her some of the text because it's classified as a munition. Even more annoying, the law is so vauge that having her hold the book might be considered illegal, and I go from being a geek to a internation arms smuggler. Compared to that, I think a stupid registration isn't so bad.

I guess we are all in trouble then...

[JJAnon]

Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time

Since I certainly haven't registered, and I haven't been supplying South Africans, I'm in trouble!

RUN!!!!!

Anyone who supplies crypto products..

[tezzery]

What exactly constitutes 'supplying'..

For example, would hosting a program on a website accessible to someone in South Africa count as supplying? What if someone in South Africa hacks into an ftp and downloads the program?

Re:Anyone who supplies crypto products..

[elmegil]

I think the latter is considered "theft" not "supplying".

Any Afrikaans speakers out there?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's "Opsaal" mean?

Just curious.

Re:Any Afrikaans speakers out there?

[hvrbyte]

It means to take something on as in "Ek sal die probleem opsaal" (I will take the problem on) It can also mean to put a saddle on a horse as in "Ek sal die perd opsaal" (I will put a saddle on the horse

Ummm... does this mean we are all nailed?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time "

I don't plan on supplying South Africans with crypto, and I don't plan on registering, so should I by be worried about a visit from the SA government sometime in the near future? ;P

-rt

Excellent News (NOT)

[RAMMS EIN]

This is excellent news! Here's another country imposing it's laws upon the whole Internet. And personally I can't think of a good way to stop them. :-( Or maybe we could just gather email addresses of those responsible and post them on /. ?
I personally feel that countries extending their jurisdiction over the Internet should be violating some kind of international treaty. After all, SA is restricting the freedom of all people here, not just their own. Perhaps we could convince G.W.O[fficeholder] to fight netwide oppression instead of perceived terrorism?

Where do I send my money?

[grub]

I've added some nifty features to ROT13 and don't want to end up in a South African jail...

Hrmmm....

[flonker]

Who else feels like sending some crypto to postmaster@aspa.co.za?

Re:Hrmmm....

[WetCat]

co.za ... Coza... Coza means goat in Russian.
Goat se ?

Re:Hrmmm....

[flonker]

It means goat in czech too.

Re:if i'm not back again this time tomorrow

[Anonymous Coward]

as if nothing really matters.

I have a similar law

[anthony_dipierro]

Anyone who supplies my house with information owes me $1000/byte.

Buyer Beware

[eclectro]

The most quiet drives, the seagate Barracuda IV atas have a problem in Raid configurations. When used in a Raid configuration, the performance is less than a single drive by itself. Raid is not officially supported by this drive. More here

Re:Buyer Beware

[Anonymous Coward]

Even in Sourth Africa?

Child Rape and Carjacking capital of the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

South Africa is a good example of what happens when you let the monkeys run the zoo.

In their native tongue

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who supplies crypto products ta South Africans (and da da system defines crypto as almost anything) has ta register wiff da appropriate agency an' pay uh ZAR2000 fee (US$200). Failure ta supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail tyme (How they're gonna git ya unless ya come ta South Motherland iz another story). A copy o' da legislation can be found can be found online. what 'chew thinking man?

Even more terrifying...

[Chastitina]

... is the additional requirement to register all "critical databases":

"The protection of sensitive data is essential for a functioning of a modern society. As stated in the Electronic Communications and Transaction Act, the information that is of importance to the protection of the national security of the country or the economic and social well-being will be declared as critical. All critical databases will be identified and registered with the Department of Communications which includes the details of the database administrator, the location of the database and the general description of the categories or types of information stored in the critical database.The registered information will be treated as confidential. The protection, management and control of critical databases must comply with the minimum standards that might be prescribed by the Minister. The audit will be performed, from time to time either by Cyber Inspectors or an independent auditor to evaluate the compliance."

Given such vague standards for "critical" almost *any* commercial database could be deemed "of importance to the protection of the national security of the country or the economic and social well-being." Amazon.com's database contains names and addresses of persons purchasing "how-to" books on terrorism and building bombs? It's critical! A Pr0n site has kept track of all visitors? Some of them *might* be criminals and dangerous to "social well-being."

Yes, there's also issues with persons living in SA downloading crypto software from foreign companies that haven't registered (are they liable or not?), but most of that is easily bypassed. Just have a visitor bring the "protected" code in on a floppy and distribute it internally.

The database restrictions have much more serious implications...

Re:Even more terrifying...

[0WaitState]

All critical databases will be identified and registered with the Department of Communications which includes the details of the database administrator, the location of the database and the general description of the categories or types of information stored in the critical database.The registered information will be treated as confidential.

Does anyone else realize what a whopping huge security hole this is? Go to one place to learn where all the secrets are! Even if you don't get the db contents (yet), you can infer all sorts of interesting things about organizations and people that show up on the lists. Using as a baseline the sad history of moles in US government security agencies, it shouldn't take much $$ relatively speaking to acquire the lists of secret dbs.

Re:Even more terrifying...

[Alsee]

The audit will be performed, from time to time either by Cyber Inspectors or an independent auditor to evaluate the compliance.

Otherwise known Random J. Hacker.

-

Re:Even more terrifying...

[Twylite]

56. (1) The Minister may prescribe minimum standards or prohibitions in respect of--
(a) the general management of critical databases;
(b) access to, transfer and control of critical databases;
(c) infrastructural or procedural rules and requirements for securing the integrity and authenticity of critical data;
(d) procedures and technological methods to be used in the storage or archiving of critical databases;
(e) disaster recovery plans in the event of loss of critical databases or parts thereof; and
(f) any other matter required for the adequate protection, management and control of critical databases.

Erm, Buenos aires?

[sapped]

But under this law, they should have to pay South America! It'll be nice to Hillary Rosin rotting in prison in Buenos Aires!

Maybe Johannesburg would work better as that is a city that is actually inside the South African borders?

Then again, speaking as an ex-South African, the current government does have such boundless abilities to mess everything up that it would not surprise me in the least if they sent people off to prisons in Buenos Aires.

Interesting

[merky1]

What a cool source of revenue for oppressed countries. Charge the providers to sell their services.

Meanwhile, nearby...

[Otter]

In other, off-topic, South Africa news, this report about Bill Clinton's recent visit:

Renée de Wet, the waitress who served Clinton, said he chose a calamari starter, followed by Norwegian salmon, garlic mash and mayonnaise. He had no dessert and no wine.

Clinton was "very down-to-earth and friendly", De Wet said. "As he left he asked if we'd like to have a picture taken and we rounded up all the staff. He was just such a cool guy.

"As he was leaving, he put his arms round a girl in his party - I don't know what her name was, she was small and dark - and said, 'Hey, take a picture of this for your local paper. This is my other wife.' "

Meanwhile, he's accompanied by -- Chris Tucker! Geez, it's embarassing enough when Bono gets treated like a head of state, but Chris Tucker? Was Carrot Top unavailable?

Heh

[Em Emalb]

the south african government:

People fear that which they don't understand.

Slashdot grammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time.

Does this mean it's all OK if I do supply South Africans without being registered?

A copy of the legislation can be found can be found online

Slightly repetititive ?

Re:Slashdot grammer

[redheadgirl]

How about slashdot spelling? "grammar", kiddo

A Clear and Present Danger...

[Anonymous Coward]

to the security of the United States of America. Fuel up the bombers, G. Dubya!

If the U.N. won't act, we must act alone to thwart this menace in South Africa!

Turnabout is fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

The black leaders are now stealing farm land from the minority white farmers, for no other reason then they are white.

I am sure that I don't have all the facts.

I am sure that I don't fully appreciate the delicacies of the country's internal politics.

But I really can't understand how you might spin this to be legitimate, unless you knew who the land belonged to when the Dutch took it in the first place. If there was no ownership, then there are no real claims.

But I guess it is ok for the black majority to kill the white minority. Two wrongs and all.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[2short]

"I am sure that I don't have all the facts."

Like the fact that South Africa and Rwanda aren't the same country perhaps?

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Zimbabwe actually, a lot of farmers however are fleeing to Rwanda because the government is more hospitable of the people of pale.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[2short]

Doh! Thanks for the correction.

Re:Turnabout is fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

You are thinking of Zimbabwe.

And anyhow, blacks are killing white farmers in South Africa, too. It's just not yet official South African government policy to exterminate the whites and to seize their land.....it's just de facto policy, in that the South African government is not too eager to do anything about it. Give them time though, and it will be official government policy.

Anyhow, South Africa has perhaps the highest per capita crime, murder, and rape rates in the world. Don't go there, especially if you are a young woman. There is a folk belief amongst African blacks that sex with a virgin will cure AIDS, resulting in most rape victims (often children) coming down with AIDS as well.

Best to stay out of South Africa altogether. Their software laws seem rather trivial in comparison to their other problems.

Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time "

So if you dont supply, and dont register as a non-supplier you get sent to jail!

I repeat: uhhhh...

Never Assume

[jasonditz]

that a foreign government can't get you if they really want to.

I'd advise everyone to do a little reading on a man called Gerhard Lauck.

He was/is an avowed neo-nazi who published material relating to his distasteful belief system in the United States (where it is of course perfectly legal, if considered bad form). He exported some of this material to Germany, where it is considered a serious crime.

Obviously the U.S. wouldn't extradite him, because freedom of the press is so important, but unfortunately for him while travelling in another country he was picked up by German authorities and pretty much smuggled acrossed the border to Germany, where he spent several years in prison.

Re:Never Assume

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, whatever you might think about Lauck's arrest and his conviction in Germany -- he was arrested in Denmark by Danish cops. Then he was extradited to Germany after a regular legal proceedings in Denmark. Later on, Lauck was convicted by a German court.

Moreover, Lauck was convicted for sending printed material containing illegal content according to German law to German "customers" -- not for any web sites or other internet activity.

Re:Never Assume

[WilliamX]

He wasn't smuggled across the border. He was arrested in Denmark for hate statements as he was attending a Neo-Nazi convention there, and was, months later and following an appeal all the way to the Danish Supreme Court, extradited to German where he was tried, convicted and served 4 years in German prisons.

Re:Never Assume

[Anonymous Coward]

"hate statements" gosh, how scary! LOL. Apparently these morons never heard of free speech. Is this the same country where pedophilia is legal, or is that the netherlands?

Yeah, well...

[The Fanta Menace]

...South Africa didn't have too much regard for citizens' rights in the past. Looks like their now democratic government still doesn't.

The sad part is that you think you're voting in someone to liberate you, but you always just get left with a corrupt politician.

Re:Yeah, well...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what happens when you elect the Communist Party !!!

It's all about taxes

[vlad_petric]

It's very simple, really - they simply don't get enough money from taxes, so they have to keep inventing new taxes to sustain their budget.

One of the signs an economy is in free-fall.

The Raven

Re:It's all about taxes

[wirelessbuzzers]

no. This really won't give them that much money. I would guess it's because they're paranoid.

Re:It's all about taxes

[vlad_petric]

In a country with a GNIPC (gross national income per capita) of ~3000$/year (Worldbank 2000 statistics, most likely smaller now), 200$/"cryptographical" system is not so bad.

The Raven

Re:It's all about taxes

[BlackEmperor]

that's certainly not the reason behind this - after all the amount of income will be negliable. the reason is simply to control the use of crypto. south africa doesnt need new taxes - in fact personal income tax has been reduced steadily over the past few years and the budget is very healthy - and to say the economy is in free fall is a massive overstatement (its not brilliant, but then what countires economy is at the moment?)

Re:It's all about taxes

[BlackEmperor]

rofl.
considering that budget revenue for sa in 2002 was R313,2 billion ($~31 billion) i think $200 per crytpo system is unlikely to make much of a contribution.

This is significant

[ACNeal]

When you think of all the people that say "What do you need to encrypt stuff for, if you aren't doing anything wrong" and the best thing you can come up with is "Do you send everyone postcards?", think of this.

One of the main reasons the entire world should be involved in strong, government free crypto is for nations that systematically deprive their citizens of basic human rights. And I am not talking about your right to fly without being frisked.

South Africa has long been known for its obscene treatment of people, and it hasn't gotten any better since Mandella took over. If anything it has gotten worse.

People need to be able to send out cries for help without those cries bringing down even more heat. Human rights workers are probably the most legitimate users of crypto, but until everyone uses crypto to send love notes, grocery lists, and the like, these messages and the people that send them, will stick out like sore thumbs.

Re:This is significant

[error0x100]

South Africa has long been known for its obscene treatment of people, and it hasn't gotten any better since Mandella took over. If anything it has gotten worse.

Man, but this is an amazingly clueless statement. You obviously do not have a CLUE what is happening in South Africa, so rather STFU about it. Do you honestly believe that SA citizens are being treated worse now than they were under apartheid? Man, get a clue. The separatism is gone. The torturings and beatings are gone. The assassinations are gone. The imprisoning of activists is gone. The violent army presence in the townships is gone. The cheap labour hostels system is gone. The forced splitting of families is gone. The bulldozing of townships is gone. The terrorist bombings are gone. The pass laws are gone. The group areas act is gone. The "state of emergency" is gone. The senseless shooting of schoolchildren is gone. Censorship is gone (there is less censorship than the USA). The people have freedom now. All citizens can vote. Millions of people now have running water. Millions now have electricity, access to telephones, access to healthcare, and access to levels of education that were denied them before. Hundreds of thousands now have homes. The apartheid government is gone. Geez, if you don't KNOW about something, rather just keep quiet than open your mouth and make a fool of yourself with such ludicrously ignorant comments. BTW, Mandela has not been in power anymore for a few years now.

South Africa has long been known for its obscene treatment of people

So has the USA. Remember slavery, Jim Crow, Martin Luther King, McCarthyism, Japanese concentration camps?

Re:This is significant

[forkboy]

So has the USA. Remember slavery, Jim Crow, Martin Luther King, McCarthyism, Japanese concentration camps?

Don't forget War on Drugs, War on Terrorism, corporate fraud, and the 1970s. (possibly the worst of them all)

I had no idea South Africa had improved so much. Just goes to show how little our media tells us about what's happening in countries that we don't want to destroy.

Re:This is significant

[Zuidera]

You are correct that the laws have changed, obviously the government has too. But you should probably keep your mouth shut as you obviously do not live here. You would then be aware of some of the really bad things that happen now. eg in the past various groups had to use different train carriages, now no one can use trains on certain lines anymore because they throw people off trains now, this either results in death or loss of limbs. I agree that they no longer use bulldozers when they evict people, they employ people to use hammers and crowbars - put it down to job creation policies. Why do you think the bombings have stopped, there were a large number of them two years ago eg Planet Hollywood, New York Bagel spring to mind in particular due to the fact that they were the work of a Muslim group which is obviously now very important to Americans. The average citizen now fears not the laws and the enforcing of them but the lack of the rule of law. Feel free to provoke more examples from me. Yes Mandela is gone, I never thought that the sun shone out his backside, or that he was even a great president. He was however a decent president, a good leader, and a great unifier. It's true that you never realise how good you've got it until things change.

Re:This is significant

[barryk]

I had no idea South Africa had improved so much.

Yes, things are not nearly as bad as they used to be. There are some crime still, but no worse than in any other counry.

Just goes to show how little our media tells us about what's happening in countries that we don't want to destroy.

Just be careful about what you beleive about the information you do get. It's probably very tainted, as the information you get about South Africa is.

Re:This is significant

[ACNeal]

No more torturing or beatings?

Maybe "gotten worse" is uncalled for, but it isn't all peaches and cream there either. The violence may not be state sponsored anymore, but still exists. These and other things I have read are what I was refering to. If they aren't true depictions of life in South Africa, I would like to be enlightened. I understand a lot of things have gotten better, but that doesn't mean it is the greatest place on earth to live.

Re:This is significant

[error0x100]

Maybe "gotten worse" is uncalled for, but it isn't all peaches and cream there either

Correct. The country has problems, like all countries do. The biggest problems are poverty, Aids, and the high crime rate.

Be careful of extrapolating what you read in the media about a country, it will always give you a distorted perception of what things are like. Taking one article and trying to make generalisations from it is a bit like me reading about Rodney King and then thinking that in the USA all the white policemen regularly beat up black people, which is obviously nonsense. It does happen, but its not a common occurrence. Some immigrants may have gotten thrown off a train last year sometime, but every day in this country millions of people use the trains without incident. (Like the US, SA has a bit of a problem with illegal immigrants trying to get in, because we are relatively wealthier than surrounding countries, and many of the locals don't like the immigrants because they take away jobs, similar to the US).

Life for the average white person here is very cushy - generally, we live at least as good as people in developed countries, in many cases better, and yet white people here complain a lot about how bad things are. Our homes, our educations, our infrastructure, our cars, our lifestyles, our unemployment rate etc are all first-world (and in some cases better, e.g. its not as crowded as Europe and so we can afford big houses, also we can afford VERY cheap domestic assistants). See my reply to Zuidera; if you want to know just how much things have really improved, you do need to learn about how bad things really were. South Africa is essentially "two worlds within one place" - a white world, and a black world. Since the townships provide a lot of cheap labour, most whites still have maids cleaning their places, and yet many whites here don't even know what their maid's home language is. Its weird.

Most of the blacks live in rural areas or townships, which are very poor, but these are the areas that are primarily improving. These are also the areas that the whites don't really notice or care about that things are improving, so they conclude that things aren't. 20-40 years ago, your average township resident basically lived in continual fear of the police, there was a continual army presence, people were regularly beaten by the police, the police would hold raids in the townships, rounding up people whose pass books etc weren't in order, sending them off to jail. They used to round up thousands of people and send them off to live in the "independent" homelands, or grab people out of these "independent homelands" to live in male-only "hostels" in townships near the cities to provide cheap labour for the white infrastructure. None of these things happen anymore, and few whites here seem to be aware that these things even happened at all, because the apartheid government controlled the media and always had "all is well", "all is under control" messages. The "perpetual fear" in the townships from the government and police etc are gone, they don't do the police raids anymore, they don't shoot protesters etc. People can move about where they please, and families can feel free to live together without fear of being split up. People worry about becoming victims of crime, of course, but to compare this to the fear people lived under during apartheid is silly. The main worry now for the average black person is trying to find a job. Unemployment and poverty are common problems, but then, they were also before, so in that sense, things are not worse than they were.

The previous government didn't spend tax money on black areas, it was all spent on the white areas. But there is definite improvement now. Over 3 million phone lines have been installed in previously disadvantaged areas, over a million people now have access to running water etc. The government is building thousands of RDP homes. Schools are also being improved. Most South Africans do though still live in small corrugated iron huts.

Overall life is relatively "peaceful" here in that there really isn't all that much 'internationally newsworthy' going on - when immigrants get thrown from a train, its an exceptional incident, while under apartheid, incidents like that were the day-to-day norm - that is the difference. Spend a few minutes a day at a site like http://www.news24.com/ for a while and you'll probably find it a bit boring, in fact. A fair amount of crime-related stuff, some local politics and sport etc, but thats about it. No invasions, no terrorist bombings, no assassinations, no natural disasters, i.e. nothing CNN-worthy.

I wasn't trying to imply it was a wonderful place to live, just that life for your average (black) SAn is a LOT better than it used to be. But there is still a long way to go. There is a lot "country building" to be done. But most (black) people are positive. (Whites, you never hear the end of their complaining). Our government does a terrible job in general of advertising improvements, so we tend not to be aware that they've happened, unless you actively go look for the information.

You can find some info on what things are like here at:

http://www.case.org.za/htm/gauteng.htm

http://www.case.org.za/htm/sanita.htm

http://www.case.org.za/htm/informal.htm

There are many other worthwhile projects going on here in terms of teaching illiterate adults to read, building libraries etc.

Crypto is made illegal

[Quixadhal]

so that certain people in that part of the world don't find out about the redirection of all the surplus government cheese...

Re:What about credit card numbers? (HUH?!)

[SirSlud]

?!?!

WHAT?!

Anyone who supplies SA's with an encryption product .. this doesn't sound like a per-seat deal, just a registration of the fact that you are selling a crypto product in SA.

Can you prove to me that this is a per-seat tarrif, or just an attempt at monitoring what crypto technologies have been imported into the country, let me know.

Until then, to suggest that they want to eliminate crypto via this registeration fee makes me ask: Why don't they just ban crypto altogether then?

How do they determine what "entity" should pay?

[Em Ellel]

It's kinda strange amount. If it is just $200, it will not stop any company, it's nothing. But what is $200 covering? The company? The product? A copy of a product? If it is company, how do you pin responsibility? What if organization like FSF pays $200 and assumes responsibility for all Opens Source Products using any of the OSS licenses. Would that legaly cover all open source projects?

-Em

How can I register as a non-supplier ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Failure to supply South Africans without being registered means potential jail time

did i get this right? how can I register as a non-supplier?

What!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a great opertunity to do a great/bad news for linux troll! You suck at trolling you karma whore, every time you get -karma you start giving the Mods a BJ by craking lame jokes and posting non-trolling content.

Re:Here are some alternative vacation locations

[malakai]

i love that this was posted "by Anonymous Coward". It underscores everything that is wrong with that post.

again.. geek influence...

[thefirelane]

"beyond a reasonable doubt"

I have a feeling we agree... but disagree on what is "reasonable"...

A simple way to show that not all .yap files are encrypted files would be to rename a .gif file to .yap. It's not encrypted, and shows that "my app" is not the only way to create such files.

Let me remind you of the circumstance...

1) Your app makes .yap files
2) They find a user with a series of random files with the .yap file type

This leaves two possibilities:
1) the user could have simply piped a random stream into a series of .yap files.
- or -
2) The user could have obtained your app and used it illegally to create encrypted file.

For point 1 the only reason the user would be doing it would be to screw over the author of the software in question.
This is where the circumstance is examined, and the arguments are made. Did the user simply want to screw over the particular author? Or were they actually using the software in question

The point being, is that showing there is another way to create .yap files, does not suddenly put the creation of your .yap files into doubt...

It is along the same lines as another common /. argument...

"The RIAA will read the list of files you are sharing on Napster, and bust you"

"Yeah, but I could have simply run 'touch Madonna_like_a_virgin.mp3' for a bunch of songs".

Sure.... again... you could have but in all honesty, do you think it is unreasonable to think they didn't?
In the case of your average user, I bet not.... This only makes sense to a /. reader because it is something that they might actually consider doing. In that case however, it would be brought up in court under the motivation part I metioned earlier.


---Lane

Re:again.. geek influence...

[tomhudson]

Okay, let's look at your points one at a time:

1: reasonable doubt. Did you know that NOWHERE in the criminal code is the term "reasonable doubt", or what constitutes a reasonable doubt, actually defined? Reasonable doubt is one of those legal niceties off which lawyers grow rich, and which, given the ever-changing social environment, any attempt to define it would be doomed to failure.

2: Existing software already can make encrypted files that don't depend on file extensions. Why would I, or any other developer who wants to screw over The Man, do something as dumb as using a default file extension? Why not have it generate random extensions?

3: Renaming a whole bunch of *.txt files to *.yap still leaves them in plain text, readable in any text viewer. It would tend to show that the user did NOT use the software, and was depending on the "security through obscurity" model.

4: If I can show that there are other ways of creating *.yap files, then I am definitely off the hook, because the courts would have to consider that, maybe, someone else's application created those files. Especially if the code for creating those files is open-source. Wow - another good argument for open source

5: Is it reasonable? One protester back in the '60s took a piece of paper and wrote FUCK THE FBI on it in big, bold letters a bunch of times, then ran it through a paper shredder, then tore up the strands, and left them in his hotel room, knowing it was going to be searched. Can you picture some poor crime tech reassembling that document? Was it reasonable? No. Did it happen? Yes.

Courts have to consider evidence. If there is no evidence, then motives become irrelevant. Show me the body! If there is no evidence that only my app can create and read *.yap files, there is no direct connection to me. It's like trying to prove murder without a corpse. Especially if, after being charged, I produce an alternative, for example, evidence that the deceased is still alive, or died of natural causes.

Thanks for replying - it's been interesting so far...

Re:again.. geek influence...

[Alsee]

Or they could just try the guy's birthdate, pet's name, girlfriend's name, or favorite sports team as passwords. It's pretty good proof when all the file sucessfully decrypt.

Chuckle.

-

Re:Theo

[Anonymous Coward]

For information on exactly how to "Eat fuck", please see the original howto. Thanks, A.C.

Oh for crying out loud

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't even obey my own country's Mickey Mouse laws. Having passed on kissing George Bush's arse, what makes Nelson Mandela think I'm going to kiss his?

Re:What about credit card numbers? (HUH?!)

[fishbowl]

"...just a registration of the fact that you are selling a crypto product in SA."

Why must everything be framed in terms of commerce and profit? Where does this leave a free OpenSSL mirror (not selling anything)?

Extradition

[Anonymous Coward]

All they have to do is give the US a bank account number, and we'll transfer the criminal via bank wire forthwith. For the favor, we'll gladly let the person owning the bank account keep an arm and a leg...

Oh wait, that's Nigeria...

Mark Shuttleworth, please help!

[WoKKiee]

Mark Shuttlewoth (1st African in space, and South African Internet millionaire and founder of Thawte) must try to talk sense into the heads of the SA government. He is after all considered to be a hero, lauded by all, even the government... Maybe he is the only guy they'll listen to.

With the new internet laws in SA, he might not have been able to start his company!

yeah really

[Raven42rac]

have fun trying to extradite the millions of people who are "supplying crypto" to the people of your country, BTW, is it just me, or does "CRYPTO" sound like one of those fake "movie" drugs? Just an observation of mine.

Re:Theo

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe a goatsecx troll made me chuckle. Ive been here for years. geez.

Re:shut up ignorant fool

[Anonymous Coward]

you are a good example of what happens when you let siblings procreate.

Re:What about credit card numbers? (HUH?!)

[blibbleblobble]

"Anyone who supplies SA's with an encryption product .. this doesn't sound like a per-seat deal, just a registration of the fact that you are selling a crypto product in SA."

This type of law doesn't normally limit itself to commercial transactions: remember that the Californian courts will consider that you "do business in" california if someone from that state can access your website. In fact, you would also be "publishing" in california. Doesn't bother them that a user would have to post a request to your server in the UK, and retrieve a document created in the UK; as far as they're concerned, it's as good as living there and running a press.

It may be illogical, uninformed, and just plain wrong, but don't be surprised if courts take a weird interpretation of things. Is pgpi.org visible from South Africa?

Jurisdiction

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You can't be extradited for statutory infringements, such as not registered.

2. They have no jurisdiction.

Hey, John Ashcroft!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing, nowhere to be found. Soon, soon.

thwart or Thwarte(R)?

[penguin_punk]

While we're on the subject of SA, did you mean thwart or Thwarte(R)?

Re:thwart or Thwarte(R)?

[Isofarro]

Neither. Its thawte

Re:thwart or Thwarte(R)?

[penguin_punk]

uhhh... oops. For some reason I knew Thwarte didn't make any sense.

France has a similar law

[stephanruby]

France requires the users of encryption to file for a permit before using encryption. And one wonders why France is still in the dark ages.

Remember Ciphersaber!

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to look at the Ciphersaber site (and do a Google search) for information on cheap, readily available crypto. Of course, the SA government could always block the site....

Check your facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is happening in South Africa too. More info here.

Re:Check your facts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha! Link to natall.com? You automatically lose, Nazi.

Ja, Big Brother want to watch you!

[bovanator]

This is typical of our government's inept and stupid attempts to regulate the Internet - under the guise of regulating Electronic Commerce... These people wouldn't know a CryptoCode if it bit them on the ass! They know absolutely nothing about how it works, but somebody somewhere heard "THE INTERNET" and now they want to control it - see the ongoing fiasco with the co.za domain.... Instead of wiring the country, educating people, creating jobs etc. they waste endless amounts of money making useless (and unenforceable) laws. It makes me ashamed to be a South African :-)

How about organzing a mass violation?

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't arrest all of us can they?

That's *in* SAf, not *to* SAf

[jon_eaves]

When will people read the friggin articles first. Oh, I forgot, this is /. with people having a reading age of about 10, and a concentration span in the nanoseconds.

When I saw it, I nearly had a heart attack, I write freely available Java crypto BouncyCastle.org and thought of the horrible problems that we're going to have keeping SAf off the site.

I spent the 2 seconds actually reading the paragraph at the SAf Gov Site and it says:

All Cryptography Providers providing services or products in South Africa are required to register their services or products with the register maintained by the Department of Communications.

Note, the wording is in.

Re:That's *in* SAf, not *to* SAf

[Twylite]

I would not dismiss that so easily. The intent of the law is the basis for the ruling of a judge (in SA). Unless a lawyer can convincingly argue that only local providers of crypto were intended to be registered, it will be read as "any provider with a presence in the SA market providing crypto". This may limit the applicability to providers with some sort of physical presence / outlet / support in SA, and not extend to pure virtual trade. But I wouldn't count on it.

Re:That's *in* SAf, not *to* SAf

[Twylite]

(3) A cryptography service or cryptography product is regarded as being provided in the Republic if it is provided--
(a) from premises in the Republic;
(b) to a person who is present in the Republic when that person makes use of the service or product; or
(c) to a person who uses the service or product for the purposes of a business carried on in the Republic or from premises in the Republic.

Re:That's *in* SAf, not *to* SAf

[paul.urban]

An SA lawyer specialising in this clarified this point for me. It should be read as a) or b) or c) Which implies (surprisingly) that people outside of SA providing crypto products or services to people inside SA ARE expected to register as providers.

Ok...

[M@T]

We won't mention the massive tariffs that the US places on imports like Australian lamb or Canadian timber or anything steel to subsidise poorly performing local industries...

or those wonderful pieces of *US* legislation like the DCMA and CDBTPA, which, regardless of their intended jurisdiction, have ramifications on software developers and technology providers worldwide.

The US doles out more shit like this SA crypto legislation than any other country in the world.

Human Rights

[t_allardyce]

Well, seeing as nowadays you can be prosecuted for things you did whilst outside a country i think its time that our governments came up with a system for warning you before you go to visit said country, that plans to arrest you when you land at the airport. Maybe there should even be a legal requirement/human right (UN etc.) to protect you from this and invalidate the charge if you weren't warned before entering the country.. or maybe im going on about a whole load of crap. (and obviously if you go to a bad bad country that doesnt give a crap about human rights *cough* america *cough* then your government should send some sectret soldiers in to break you out of prison and take you home. :)

BFD

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're living in South Africa you're screwed anyway. This is just another way for the Govt. to bend you over.

Get your facts straight!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure you don't know what you're talking about. Black people are murdering us, raping our wifes and stealing my car because of something my grandparents did and I don't even understand. Get real! I live here and lost a couple of friends and family members who got murdered in the last 7 years just because they're white!

Section 30.3(a)

[Dogcow]

As is usual for Slashdot users, it appears almost everybody has gone off half-cocked on this one. In other words, it doesn't look like any of you have even read the legislation...

Reading through the legislation, this only appears to apply if you're providing cryptography or "cryptography services" from "premises in the Republic". In particular, check Section 30.3(a-c):

(3) A cryptography service or cryptography product is regarded as being provided in
the Republic if it is provided-

( a ) from premises in the Republic;
( b ) to a person who is present in the Republic when that person makes use of the service or productl or
( c ) to a person who uses the service or product for the purposes of a business
carried on in the Republic or from premises in the Republic.

Note that there's no "or" between (a) and (b). If there was, it'd (in theory) apply to cryptography or "cryptography service" providers worldwide.

On the face of it, this appears to mean that if you're a site or company doing business from outside South Africa, you can continue to do so without registration with the authority mentioned in the Legislation.

In my particular case (www.wiretapped.net), since I operate from outside South Africa, I am unaffected. If Wiretapped had a mirror site in South Africa, it appears as though the operator of it would need to register with the authority mentioned in the legislation.

Given that the registration doesn't require that you reveal any trade secrets about the cryptography or "cryptography services" that you provide, it doesn't look like this is a particularly onerous requirement. That said, there does appear to be a small intelligence trapdoor in it - as part of the information provided to the register, you'd need to provide enough information to "identify and locate the cryptography provider". I wonder if this means - "identify the specific cryptography in use and hence the cryptography provider from a stream of random bits". This may not be possible given the output streams of widely used, modern ciphers. It might only be possible if there's some other hint(s) in the surrounding protocol. Although the true strength of modern cryptography is considered to be in the key rather than the algorithm, to my mind there's no harm obscuring what algorithm you're using as well as (obviously) the key.

One wonders if this will endanger the existence of mirror sites in South Africa for things like OpenSSH, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, GnuPG, PGPi etc... Perhaps just the poor ones...

Re:Section 30.3(a)

[Anonymous Coward]

It will affect people using apache with modssl for hosting in south africa, as they will be required to pay as well. Also downloading Linux/FreeBSD would also be a problem, if you aren't registered, as they have crypto in as well

Re:Section 30.3(a)

[Dogcow]

Shit a brick.

You didn't even read the post properly, let alone the legislation.

If you're an SSL hoster in the country, you'd need to register your organisation _once_, providing details of what you do ("we serve web pages over SSL v2, v3 and TLS v1 encrypted connections to Internet users").

If you're an SA user just downloading Open/Free/NetBSD from somewhere outside the country, this doesn't affect you at all.

You only need to register if you are _supplying_ cryptography or cryptography services from within the country. Not using. Not downloading. Not thinking about while choking a turd.

Please, read the legislation.

It is clear that you have not.

Re:Section 30.3(a)

[paul.urban]

An SA lawyer specialising in this clarified this point for me.

It should be read as a) or b) or c)

Which implies (surprisingly) that people outside of SA providing crypto products or services to people inside SA ARE expected to register as providers.

I wouldn't worry too much...

[bushboy]

South Africa has a hard enough time with simple tasks like traffic fines, keeping people in jail, preventing rape, murder and other violent crime.

In fact, they are totally useless at all of the above.

And you really think they will have the ability to persue this highly technical new law ?

I think the main purpose of this action is to encourage investment and business in the country by saying that "South Africa is a secure location to conduct e-commerce" - Somehow, I don't think it's going to work...

Re:I wouldn't worry too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

The nice thing about this highly technical new law is that those who break it will be (a) easy to find, (b) non-violent, (c) scared to go to jail.

Easy money.

Re:I wouldn't worry too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, you big arse-hole.

I can say that now because this slashdot story is so old, no-one will ever read my comment.

You are a cock sucking, mentally retarded mother fucker.

Hows that ? - Didn't mean it - it just sounds good...

The legislation says *to* not *in*

[Anonymous Coward]

30 (3) A cryptography service or cryptography product is regarded as being provided in
the Republic if it is provided-
(a ) from premises in the Republic;
(b) to a person who is present in the Republic when that person makes use of the service or product;
or (c) to a person who uses the service or product for the purposes of a business carried on in the Republic or from premises in the Republic.

Helloooo....

[Anonymous Coward]

When are people going to wake up to the fact that the South African "government" is an imcompetent, clueless, corrupt and power-hungry bunch of ex-terrorists hell-bent on implementing their Marxist policies in every sphere of life - just another specimen of the stereotypical post-colonial African regime.

The sooner we get rid of that one the better for all South Africans.

Don't worry, they're idiots

[dswan69]

The morons who put this bill through are about as clueless as you can get when it comes to technology or even reality. In fact their talk is very much like that of members of the US government.

And it won't get enforced as they simply do not have the resources to police it.

The bill and the misinterpretation.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the post is misleading and everyone here is misinterpreting what the whole act is about.

The ECT bill and it's implementation is a way of protecting the countries data infrastructure. It defines standards that all databases and critical technical centers need to conform to. Examples of the standards include how the physical machines are protected to the actual software, data backups and more abstract considerations.

All databases and critical information centers crucial to the proper functioning of public computer systems and non-public systems which directly or indirectly affect the country or it's people as whole now need to conform to the ECT bill in order to ensure that infrastructures are not dropped, broken or lost.

What's more, the fact that it is now a law, makes it a legal requirement for all critical database to be properly protected. The Cyber Inspectors are a way of ensuring this.

Another aspect of the whole act makes digital signatures a legal and binding way of signing documents. This is what the cryptographic database is all about. The cryptographic database will issue and maitain the legal digital signatures with the help of a trusted third party.

If not taxes, then certainly for control

[vollasolla]

Hey bigchief, what SA are you living in? The only personal tax that got less was those on welfare cheques. Yeah, the budget got healthy for senior govt. officals: Budget for big house in Sandton. Budget for big BMW. Budget for big BMW. Budget for big BMW. ....... The govt. is systematically taxing everything that used to be covered by normal taxes anyway. One good example is our main roads. All major metro routes will be tolled from next year. Will this happen in your SA too, mr Emperor? They say it is to pay for the roads etc. But that is what our petrol tax is supposed to cover. Yes - our fuel could be 1/3 the price if we weren't paying for the friggen minister's wife's couzin's girlfriend's luxury car. This place is becoming a shithole for anyone who has a bit of money to buy more than just a halfloaf. I won't be surprised if we see Internet tax soon. Keep in mind what population group is currently the major user of the Internet here. The govt. won't leave any stone unturned until they can tax that group 150%. Say it aint so. and... The economy is not in free fall anymore, coz it hit shit already. Also keep in mind that with this govt. if it is not for money then it must be for control. VollaSolla

Re:If not taxes, then certainly for control

[datadictator]

Well I am South-African as well, and I happen to be white. I also happen to have been a wize-ass nine-year old when Apartheid ended. Why on earth should I pay for the mistakes (and it was a mistake - not a deliberate infringement on human rights but a failed attempt to guarantee it) that my father and grandfather voted for ?
And it is also true that when they voted for it, they didn't know about the cruelties that were being done onto people - this stuff was so secret F.W. De Klerk didn't know about it.
It is simply not fair that I should have trouble finding work because of the bush-war - it was over for five years before I even knew it had ever happened - the ANC does not realize the extent of the culture of silence that had led to these atrocities.

Now here we are, ten years later, still blaming every possible social problem on the past. It is not because of appartheid that I was stabbed in the chest with a knife while'st walking my girlfriend to the buss-stop. If appartheid made the perp poor, he could have had my wallet, he did not need to try and kill me. This culture of violence if anything is exasperated by a very flawed goverment.

We have a goverment here, that seeks to controll everything the rich 20% amongst us has, and let everything else take a nose-dive to hell. Within the goverment a breach is threatening over their economic policies - exactly in line with what the multinationals would like, rather than what we as a nation need.

I call myself a patriot - I love my country, but patriotism does not mean I need to love my goverment. Those who have read my other posts in the past will know how liberal I am - but the ANC isn't a liberal goverment despite their claims to the contrary.

This ridiculous notion is exactly akin to the fiasco earlier this year when they tried to steal control of the .za namespace. They almost put every ISP in the country out of business that time.

South-Africa it is often said has two economies, the white first-world and the black third-world economy. Apparently the goverment is convinced that they cannot every get everyone to share in the first-world economy, so instead they are systematically trying to destroy the first world economy here and make everyone poor.

Surely this is not clever - the economic and social policies we are implementing (including this one and such other famous things as the nevirapien and Sarafina 2 bugger-ups) are to the detriment of all.

The rich 20% (which unlike the goverements claims are in fact not even nearly a pure white group) is the only thing keeping the poor 80% alive, we provide the buffer that allows charities to run here, we are the only reason this country doesn't have the massive starvation rates already prevalent in the rest of africa. We provide the management skills (because we were blessed enough to get an education) that allows the majority of our forreign aid to get to it's intended recipients (where else does that happen ?)

Yes this is a rant, a rant by someone who hates seeing his beautifull homeland being destroyed bit by bit. Freedomn is gone - the goverment has actually begun arresting activist under censorship laws still on the books after being passed in the worst part of the 80's by the apartheid regime.
Our economy is no more free than 15 years ago, except now nobody wins.

The only actually rich people left in this country is the corrupt officials - did you know that 90% of the cabinet ministers pay their domestic workers less than half the minimum wage ? They set that wage, and now they are breaking the law.

OK, I am going to stop now before I go any further offtopic.

PS - The highest earning ethnic group in the country are in fact the Indian population according to a recent study by the University of South-Africa.

Re:If not taxes, then certainly for control

[BlackEmperor]

well i earn R200 000 a year and my taxes came down so i dont know what youre talking about.

The point?

[FAllWOT]

The only point of the exercise, from the government's perspective, is that they can have control. The "Cyber Inspectors" can't do their jobs if their investigations can (easily) be flaunted by cryptography.
The aim is to allow the government to decrypt any encrypted data that they decide they should decrypt. Of course, this is ludicrous because, without the key, you can't decrypt the data. Unless their cryptographic methods are flawed, the cryptography sources can't help with this process either, which is the aim of the registration.
See http://www.ectbill.co.za/ for more information about all the fundamentally constitutionality and feasibility flaws in the ECT Bill. The bill was created without any consultation with real IT professionals, and I don't actually believe that President Mbeki, who signed the bill on July 31st, actually understands cryptography much further than the fact that it makes data unreachable.

Missing the point

[beuges]

I think all those people, who posted replys telling everyone else off for not reading the legislation correctly, are missing the point.
The point is, that the South African government has no business charging licensing, registration or any other fees for internet or crypto products. Why should they? It's got absolutely nothing to do with them. When I first heard of the government wanting to have a hand in the assigning of .za domain names, the first thing I thought of was "These guys just want to be in it so they'll be able to slap a tax or something on domains, just so they can get something out of it" - same thing here - they're going to charge people more than R2000 for absolutely nothing.
There's currently a national strike of a whole lot of trade unions, striking against governments privatisation policies - If government is so into privatisation, why are they trying to take stuff that doesn't concern them and make them government issues?
In short: The South African govenrment is made up of a bunch of complete moronic idiots - I know this for a fact, because I have to live with their ineptitude and total lack of intelligence every single day

here are the details on the extradition treaty

[Kaneda]

US/SA Extradition

Your prejudice is showing - the apartheid government was booted out 10 years ago. Do you think the rest of the world is still punishing the NEW government for the sins of the past. Wake up, moron. Sorry, I think 'dumbass' was the term you used.

Makes Mandrake illegal

[G�tz]

This seems to make Mandrake Linux illegal in .za. It ships with gnupg and the Enigmail encryption extension for Mandrake.

I hope they don't put Mandrake contributor and Mozilla translator Buchan Milne in prison now.

Don't worry, yet .....

[buchanmilne]

There are lots of linux/gpg/openssl users around

I think the local linux distributors (such as Obsidian) have or are in the process of registering.

Now the question comes, what happens if I write and sell (for a negligible fee) copies of Mandrake 9.0? I guess then I will need to register also ...

P.S. All people who have commented on the South African government should consider whether they know enough about it before they make comments, some conceptions are about 10 years out of date ...

Anyway, I am not in jail, and I think my PLF mirror should be ok too (until we get software patents) ...

Greets Gotz.

Buchan

Re:Don't worry, yet .....

[G�tz]

P.S. All people who have commented on the South African government should consider whether they know enough about it before they make comments, some conceptions are about 10 years out of date ...

I'm sure there are some US citizens who believe .za still has the apartheid regime. But I must admit I haven't read that law either, it would give me a headache.

Anyway, I am not in jail, and I think my PLF mirror should be ok too (until we get software patents) ...

Good to hear. But I'm sure you'll also get software patents like the rest of us, WIPO will take care of that.

What about DVDs?

[pjc50]

So does every importer of DVDs and players need to register? Cool - great way to slow down the adoption of DRM!

Background to the bill from a South African

[Anonymous Coward]

As a south africa who has been following this
since the beginning, I'll tell you this:

The minister of Post and Telecoms is an extremely
unintelligent man who does not know how to turn
on a computer. Trying to explain to him about
cryptography (and I know people who have had
personal audiences to this effect) is like
trying to explain to an illiterate mine worker.

They sucked this bill out of there thumbs for
the simple reason that they didn't have anything
better to do. Its about as complicated as that.

Now many of you are querying how to "define"
terms of the bill etc. These issues were simply
not considered by the committee during the
drawing up of the bill because they don't
understand anything about computers at all.

The bill is not enforceble simply because the
police have much better things to do: like
stopping the various gang syndicats from
knocking over cash transit vehicles, hijacking
cars etc.

I think that any police officer asked to arrest
someone because of Intellectual Property or
Crypto violations would probably laugh.
Rest assured, no one is going to get arrested
over anything as abstract as this in the near
future.

-paul

psheer@icon.co.za

Actually

[error0x100]

You are correct that the laws have changed, obviously the government has too. But you should probably keep your mouth shut as you obviously do not live here.

I do live here. You should educate yourself about just how bad apartheid REALLY was. Your average white South African doesn't have a clue what apartheid was really like, we have a very watered down idea because we were shielded from this information by the NP governments propaganda during the apartheid years.

If you want some clue as to what was really happening in this country, try reading "Warfare by other means" (by Peter Stiff) or "Kaffir Boy" (Mark Mathabane) or "Country of my skull" (Antjie Krog). You will be quite surprised to learn just how bad apartheid really was, both down on the ground for the average township resident, all the way up to the top levels of government.

The terrorist bombings I'm referring to were both MK and the right-wing terrorists - these ARE gone from our lives. Remember Hillview high school, Verwordburgh post office, Krugersdorp post office, COSATU house in Pretoria, Bree street, Germiston, Jan Smuts etc? No, funny, we seem to have forgotten about over 100 bombings carried out by the AWB and other right-wing groups and by ANC MK also (remember Robert McBride?).

I wasn't talking about using bulldozers "to evict people". I was talking about the complete, wanton destruction of entire townships or entire sections of townships in one go, with no discrimination whatsoever. Crossroads? District Six? Alexandra?

Sharpville massacre? Soweto uprisings? Over 750 people were *known* to have been killed, over 10,000 (including *schoolchildren*) were detained in prisons, tortured, beaten, murdered. How many "mysteriously" died of natural causes while in custody?. All the people who mysteriously just disappeared? Schoolchildren beaten and shot in the back while running away?

What about the regular township police raids that had millions living in perpetual fear? It doesn't happen anymore. The fear of crime is nothing compared to the fear that the people of this country were living under.

What about the economic mismanagement of our country in the 80's? Inflation and interest rates running away, national debt on the rise. Mbeki's government is actually managing to reduce the national debt. Our previous government was at least as bad at running the country as the new one.

You would then be aware of some of the really bad things that happen now. eg in the past various groups had to use different train carriages, now no one can use trains on certain lines anymore because they throw people off trains now, this either results in death or loss of limbs. I agree that they no longer use bulldozers when they evict people, they employ people to use hammers and crowbars - put it down to job creation policies. Why do you think the bombings have stopped, there were a large number of them two years ago eg Planet Hollywood, New York Bagel spring to mind in particular due to the fact that they were the work of a Muslim group which is obviously now very important to Americans. The average citizen now fears not the laws and the enforcing of them but the lack of the rule of law. Feel free to provoke more examples from me.

Nobody said things aren't bad now. But to say that things are worse than they were under apartheid is complete fscking stupidity or ignorance. Things are MUCH better for the average black South African. Things are worse for the average white South African. That is why we tend to largely think that things are worse in the country in general, but they are not.

Yes Mandela is gone, I never thought that the sun shone out his backside, or that he was even a great president. He was however a decent president, a good leader, and a great unifier. It's true that you never realise how good you've got it until things change

Yeah yeah the sky is falling blah blah. White South Africans think the country is going to pieces. I'm sorry, but AFAICT, my cushy wealthy white SAn lifestyle has not deteriorated at all since 1994. I earn a high salary, live in a nice place, drive a nice car. The crime rate is a bit higher, but thats about the only problem we can really complain about. The unemployment rate for white people here is 5%. That is the same as the overall rate in the USA. It just doesn't get better than that. We still have all the good jobs. We still make much more money than the blacks. We still get better educations than the blacks. We still directly benefit from the system of large pools of cheap labour near to the cities. And yet all we whites seem to do is complain about how bad things are. If its so bad, why don't you emigrate?

Feel free to provoke more examples from me

I'll take you up on that. Give me more examples of just how awful things are now.

The biggest problems in this country are poverty, Aids and crime. All three appear to be linked.

I would much rather live in fear of crime than live in fear of my own government.

You're making the common mistake of extrapolating the white experience to the entire country. "Things are worse for whites, therefore they must be worse everywhere". Things had to get worse for whites. If you ask me, it could have been a lot worse. Even today, "white" neighbourhoods STILL get more money and services from the government than "previously disadvantage" communities. We can hardly be complaining.

Re:Actually

[Zuidera]

First of sorry for saying that you don't live in SA when you are proudly South African. Secondly I now understand why slashdot has the reputation it does Propaganda existed then in an overt from, now in exist in a more subtle form, unless you are black and you dare to question the government you are automatically racist, if you are black you get labelled an elitist or or some such thing which implies that they are against everything the government does, especially the good things. Odd how come certain things never get reported, while other things get reported on. Selective reporting is both a form of censorship and a form of propaganda. About the bombings bit, I never said they didn't happen , I said they also happened more recently. about the bulldozers bit you should be a bit more specific to avoid misunderstandings. I don't deny that bad things happened under the apartheid government, what I am saying is that they arecontinuing to happen under the present government albeit in different guises. eg the Army had to be called in afterthe police ran out of reinforcements at a recentmatric after party of 3 schools. what the hell is that about, the *army* is needed to sort it out. search on matric & / strandfontein. I enjoy the way you compare the economic situation of a country enduring sanctions to one which became the darling of the world. btw inflation is officially at over 15% we could well end up were we were, even though circumstance are vastly different. Besides that debt can be reduced by selling off the assets eg Eskom, Telkom, Transnet, any other government corporation that you care to name. So I wouldn't worry about the debt that the present government inherited when viewed against the assets which it inherited. You mention Aids, has anyone managed to get Mbeki to utter the words himself "HIV causes AIDS"? Poverty does feed into crime, but I recently decided that a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, eg cash in transit heists, knocking offmillions at a time is not about poverty, greed perhaps, but not poverty. I was wondering the other day just where the country would have been economically were it not for sanctions, probably a lot better with less poverty. Which is why I now subscribe to the view that sanctions are not very due to them not being selective. Aids is more about education imho and not that degree / diploma type education, simple HIV causes AIDS, safe sex, abstinence type of education. There is some but not enough. Back to fear, how come people tell me that riding some trains makes them sick ie they go to the bathroom when they get to work and are physically sick, and that they live in fear in their homes - of crime? You end off by stating that you'd rather fear crime than your government, earlier having pointed out that the government used to be feared you missed the option that I would have chosen, live in fear of neither! The point of 750 killed while not a good thing pales in comparison to our murder rate. How many people are detained in prison awaiting trial, because the cant afford bail, I'm not a betting man but some would put money on it, that it is a heck of a lot more than 10 000. What about them? This is due to the Justice system (courts, state prosecutes) being indisarray that's where that backlog comes from. Statistics SA is in a mess, I've met the guy who has been asked to go up there and fix it. Eskom after giving anexperienced employee a golden handshake in order to get their numbers right, and employing someone else (numbers again) has to employ this person as a consultant to come in after the shift is over and fix certain mistakes. I hope he doesn't work at Koeberg. Well I bet the half a million laid off over the last few years don't see themselves as better off, you're going to tell me that they are white? If you want me to be all doom and gloom how about in 5 years time? Aids should be having more of an impact then, unemployment will be worse. We'll see if Zimbabwe goes pop and a couple million more will stream into the country. That's a result of Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy". SAsupplies Zimbabwe with electricity, SA has loaned them big money, if SA wanted to they could have yanked the leash and Zimbabwe wouldn't have got into such a deep mess. How about when a paper leaks that says government wants 51% (currently 2%) of mine ownership to be in black hands in ten years, later they back off and say "it was anopening position" it's already too late! The Rand takes a knock, the share market dips, a major mining dealdoesn't go through. How do you think this impacts the economy which is about the only chance there is of relieving poverty. You make the point of white people complaining and emigrating problem is that if things get too bad people do emigrate, and the people that can emigrate are exactly the people the country needs to stay, its all the fault of ANC who are only to happy to see this happen, Australia hasplenty of ex- SA's already, New Zealand is bit easier to get into, and Canada just loves the doctors it gets at a bargain rate. As I said they love this situation. SA on the other hand does not love this situation, you say so what when some white business mangets hijacked, complains, nothing gets done, you telhim to emigrate, guess what he will emigrate! Kiss a couple more jobs goodbye and a chunk of tax money that could have improved the lives of others. And I would like to know wtf R40 billion is being spent on arms for? SA obviously doesn't care what happens in Zim, so who else is there? Going to invade Botswana, because they sure as hell wont invade SA. How's that for debt reduction? btw I edited it after I got to the doom and gloom comment and now the whole thing is pretty negative, sorry about that. But as I always say at least the weather is good man.

Re:Actually

[error0x100]

Hmm.. first off, sorry for accusing you of being "just another" "country is going to the dogs" whining SAn white person. Most white people I know whine and whine about 'how bad things are' but all they are doing is regurgitating what the people around them are saying without actually having the vaguest bit of facts to back up the statement other than the vague "uh, gee, well, look at the Rand" and "crime is high". But you at least appear to have "done your homework" :).

You make some very good points, although I don't completely agree with everything you say.

There have been more recent bombings but they were not apartheit related, so I wanted to avoid referencing them, but you are right, terrorism does still occur. Part of my slight mis-perception on that though comes from the fact that I live in Pretoria, the area more affected by apartheid terrorism, while the Cape is mostly affected by the more recent bombings, which I guess is just further away in my mind.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that all or even most of the nasty things perpetrated by the apartheid government are still being perpetrated, but yes, nasty things are still happening. Re: Army + matric party, yes, our society is quite sick, unfortunately, that such ridiculous things happen. It is sad. And it has for some reason or another become cultural, i.e. people are just behaving like that (e.g. baby rapes etc, which are a tiny minority of cases, sure, but it doesn't make it any less sick that it happens). Blacks blame apartheid for how sick our society has become, while whites often (while blacks are not around, lets admit it) argue, basically, that "blacks are just savages", "thats their culture" etc. I don't know where the truth lies, but I don't buy either argument. I certainly don't buy the white argument, because before Europeans arrived on this continent, the black culture that had been here for hundreds of years was NOT a "sick society", they were a relatively peaceful (apart from regular low-scale tribal territorial/power conflict) agricultural society. Whatever has caused our society to degenerate is something that happened in the last one or two hundred years. Even the sick "initiation practices" that go on now are not representative of what initiation practices were before white people came here. I'm not trying to point blame, just saying that the usual white argument you hear (when blacks aren't around) that "black people are just like that" does not hold water. Whatever it is, there is no excuse for it.

I enjoy the way you compare the economic situation of a country enduring sanctions to one which became the darling of the world. btw inflation is officially at over 15% we could well end up were we were, even though circumstance are vastly different

This is a good point, yes, but one must also keep in mind that even though we are politically the "darling of the world" since 1994, we are not economically, there is a vast difference. In spite of positive sentiment about the "new South Africa", foreign investors still have absolutely no confidence in this country. And we are also now suffering the effects of the brain-drain, and will be for some time. Personally, I think the effects of the brain-drain are far worse than sanctions, but then, I'm not an economist.

Besides that debt can be reduced by selling off the assets eg Eskom, Telkom, Transnet

A very good point.

Our government's Aids policy is a complete joke. I cannot argue with you here. I believe that large-scale education campaigns (in every school, every village, every township etc) is the way to go here. We obviously can't wait for Mbeki to do something. But nobody in our government seems to have the leadership skills to just stand up and implement the things that need to be implemented. One almost gets the impression that they are all just standing around waiting for someone else to do something about it. This is however not something we can really use to compare our current government to the previous government. Who is to say what they would have done if they had been faced with the Aids epidemic. They probably would have had education campaigns for whites, and just spent nothing on the blacks, letting them all infect each other and die off. But that is speculation. I believe the current governments policies have more to do with sheer incompetence than with malice.

Poverty does feed into crime, but I recently decided that a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, eg cash in transit heists, knocking offmillions at a time is not about poverty, greed perhaps, but not poverty

It is true that some crime is committed out of greed. This will always be true, it is true even in the richest nations. But I believe that such crime less than 30% of cases. The facts are, statistically, wherever you go in the world, that crime rate and poverty are linked (

Hmm.. first off, sorry for accusing you of being "just another" "country is going to the dogs" whining SAn white person. Most white people I know whine and whine about 'how bad things are' but all they are doing is regurgitating what the people around them are saying without actually having the vaguest bit of facts to back up the statement other than the vague "uh, gee, well, look at the Rand" and "crime is high". But you at least appear to have "done your homework" :).

You make some very good points, although I don't completely agree with everything you say.

There have been more recent bombings but they were not apartheit related, so I wanted to avoid referencing them, but you are right, terrorism does still occur. Part of my slight mis-perception on that though comes from the fact that I live in Pretoria, the area more affected by apartheid terrorism, while the Cape is mostly affected by the more recent bombings, which I guess is just further away in my mind.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that all or even most of the nasty things perpetrated by the apartheid government are still being perpetrated, but yes, nasty things are still happening. Re: Army + matric party, yes, our society is quite sick, unfortunately, that such ridiculous things happen. It is sad. And it has for some reason or another become cultural, i.e. people are just behaving like that (e.g. baby rapes etc, which are a tiny minority of cases, sure, but it doesn't make it any less sick that it happens). Blacks blame apartheid for how sick our society has become, while whites often (while blacks are not around, lets admit it) argue, basically, that "blacks are just savages", "thats their culture" etc. I don't know where the truth lies, but I don't buy either argument. I certainly don't buy the white argument, because before Europeans arrived on this continent, the black culture that had been here for hundreds of years was NOT a "sick society", they were a relatively peaceful (apart from regular low-scale tribal territorial/power conflict) agricultural society. Whatever has caused our society to degenerate is something that happened in the last one or two hundred years. Even the sick "initiation practices" that go on now are not representative of what initiation practices were before white people came here. I'm not trying to point blame, just saying that the usual white argument you hear (when blacks aren't around) that "black people are just like that" does not hold water. Whatever it is, there is no excuse for it.

I enjoy the way you compare the economic situation of a country enduring sanctions to one which became the darling of the world. btw inflation is officially at over 15% we could well end up were we were, even though circumstance are vastly different

This is a good point, yes, but one must also keep in mind that even though we are politically the "darling of the world" since 1994, we are not economically, there is a vast difference. In spite of positive sentiment about the "new South Africa", foreign investors still have absolutely no confidence in this country. And we are also now suffering the effects of the brain-drain, and will be for some time. Personally, I think the effects of the brain-drain are far worse than sanctions, but then, I'm not an economist.

Besides that debt can be reduced by selling off the assets eg Eskom, Telkom, Transnet

A very good point.

Our government's Aids policy is a complete joke. I cannot argue with you here. I believe that large-scale education campaigns (in every school, every village, every township etc) is the way to go here. We obviously can't wait for Mbeki to do something. But nobody in our government seems to have the leadership skills to just stand up and implement the things that need to be implemented. One almost gets the impression that they are all just standing around waiting for someone else to do something about it. This is however not something we can really use to compare our current government to the previous government. Who is to say what they would have done if they had been faced with the Aids epidemic. They probably would have had education campaigns for whites, and just spent nothing on the blacks, letting them all infect each other and die off. But that is speculation. I believe the current governments policies have more to do with sheer incompetence than with malice.

Poverty does feed into crime, but I recently decided that a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, eg cash in transit heists, knocking offmillions at a time is not about poverty, greed perhaps, but not poverty

It is true that some crime is committed out of greed. This will always be true, it is true even in the richest nations. But I believe that such crime less than 30% of cases. The facts are, statistically, wherever you go in the world, that crime rate and poverty are linked (and statistically, even more so in places where the discrepancy between rich and poor is greater, such as in SA). My personal feeling is that if we (somehow magically) eliminated poverty in SA tomorrow, that within two to three years the crime rate would drop by approximately 70%. The remaining percentage would come down to greed etc, which we cannot get rid of anyway.

There is another point I'd like to make though regarding such "greed crimes", and that is that if the overall crime rate was less (the day-to-day "poverty" crimes that are keeping our police force busy), then the police would also have more time and resources to spend fighting white-collar crime, "greed" crimes etc, and thus the "greed crimes" percentage would also decrease.

live in fear of neither

Of course :) We would all rather live in fear of neither. But neither the problems or the solutions are simple. We need to do a lot of work in this country to solve these problems. But I would rather try help solve them than just leave and go live in a 1st world country. At the most basic levels, we need to tackle widespread poverty, and secondly we need to tackle widespread education (normal book and school type education) quality issues. Like it or not, we do need "transformation", because even 8 years on we are still living in a world where whites dominate the economy and are the "educated elite", and unless we can genuinely transform the country (i.e. actually educate the black people that get affirmative action jobs), the blacks will not generally perceive things to have changed, and if a large enough proportion of the black population starts to feel like "whites still dominate" and that "things haven't changed", then we may end up being Zimbabwe version 2. We need to solve these problems.

How many people are detained in prison awaiting trial, because the cant afford bail, I'm not a betting man but some would put money on it, that it is a heck of a lot more than 10 000. What about them?

Its true, of course, but this cannot really be compared to detaining 10 000 people simply because they might be involved in trying to topple apartheid. Also, the police are probably not actively torturing and beating the detainees, as they did with the Soweto uprising prisoners (at least, nowhere near the same level). Additionally, many of the detained that were tortured and beatn were schoolchildren. It's an entirely different problem, really, and once again it comes down to inadequate resources to cope with the excessive scale of the problem, rather than deliberate malice. The previous government tried to imprison and torture activists, while the current government is trying to do things right, trying to improve the judicial system, to cope with the backlog etc. I remember not too long ago the court employees over here even decided personally to put in many extra hours to try cope with the backlog.

Well I bet the half a million laid off over the last few years don't see themselves as better off, you're going to tell me that they are white

It may be useful to keep in mind that the same thing is happening all over the world. Over a million people have lost their jobs since September 11 in the US alone. The world economy is slowing, or one might rather look at it as, re-adjusting to reality.

The job situation may have deteriorated in SA, but even so, white people are still fussy about the types of jobs they are willing to take. When last did you see a white garbageman? White toilet cleaner? White petrol pump attendant? I haven't seen a single one of any of the above in Pretoria. This particular aspect of white culture in South Africa is unique in the world, as far as I know. In other rich countries like the US, even skilled people like programmers are willing to swallow their pride and flip burgers for a while if necessary. We have developed a "cultural expectation" of not working shitty jobs, and by and large, by utilizing emmigration, we tend to be able to meet that expectation.

Aids deaths, Aids orphans, Zimbabwe .. problems that will really start to hit us during the next ten years, you are right. The next 10 - 15 years could well be the most challenging period ever for the new South Africa. I've made up my mind though to stay here and help.

That's a result of Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy". SAsupplies Zimbabwe with electricity, SA has loaned them big money, if SA wanted to they could have yanked the leash and Zimbabwe wouldn't have got into such a deep mess

I personally don't think that Mbeki has any power whatsoever over what is happening and what is going to still happen in Zimbabwe. Everyone is blaming Mbeki for not doing anything, everyone is saying "Mbeki should do something". But Mbeki is not in control here, Mugabe is. Mugabe is the one with the agenda, the one pulling the strings, the one making the decisions, and lets face it: he does not care what anyone thinks of it. The fact is, if Mbeki opts for "quiet diplomacy", it will not work (as can be seen, Mugabe ignores it). If Mbeki were to "get tough on Zimbabwe", what do you think would happen? Do you HONESTLY think Mugabe would say "Oh gee I've seen the error of my ways, I'm changing"? No way. Mugabe would just stand up and say "Mbeki is obviously just a porn of the collonial British government, and we're going our own way, with or without SA". Thats a fact. If Mbeki pull the plug on electricity, on economic loans, all that would happen is that Zimbabwe would deteriorate much faster. I mean, think about, if Mugabe really cared about his economy turning to shit, would he still be pursing his current course of action? No. Clearly he doesn't care.

That is my rather hopeless-looking analysis of the Zimbabwe situation. I truly believe that SA does not really have any power here, unless we go USA-style and invade Zimbabwe. Which isn't going to happen, and its probably a bad idea anyway.

You make the point of white people complaining and emigrating problem is that if things get too bad people do emigrate, and the people that can emigrate are exactly the people the country needs to stay, its all the fault of ANC who are only to happy to see this happen, Australia hasplenty of ex- SA's already, New Zealand is bit easier to get into, and Canada just loves the doctors it gets at a bargain rate. As I said they love this situation. SA on the other hand does not love this situation, you say so what when some white business mangets hijacked, complains, nothing gets done, you telhim to emigrate, guess what he will emigrate!

As far as I can tell, most SAns are not emigrating because they were victims of crime. They are emigrating because they are looking for a more comfortable lifestyle in a country which is more "sorted out" and has fewer problems. Emigration appears to have become a cultural thing, driven these days almost entirely out of its own momentum. What I mean by that is, its become the "norm" to emigrate, people now do it simply because its the "norm", without even paying much consideration to why. When you graduate from University, its almost a case of people ask you not if you are going, but where you are going. When people ask me and I tell them I'm staying, they look at me like there is something wrong with me.

Don't get me wrong, I think the brain drain is a huge problem economically. I noticed something interesting, up until now its mostly been whites leaving, and the government has just stood by quietly and let it happen, without saying anything. A new problem is emerging though .. now that Universities are starting to graduate skilled black people, many of those black people are now also emigrating, for pretty much all the same reasons the whites are leaving. And now suddenly, Mboweni stands up the other day going off about how big a problem the brain-drain suddenly is, and how he thinks the government should be working much harder at trying to keep skilled workers here. Shock, horror, black people are leaving too, and suddenly "its a problem" :(

One thing that annoys me about the emigrants is that they appear to be the biggest patriots. They seem to be the ones who are saying the loudest how much they love SA. "I love SA, I could just never live there" --- WTF? Thats bull, in my opinion. If you emigrate, its because you think that "somewhere else is nicer", period. They act like refugees or something. If you think "somewhere else is nicer", then don't put up a website saying "I love South Africa, I would like to live there again someday". They leave for selfish reasons. They go provide their (relatively) cheap labour to help already-developed nations develop even further. They leave the rest of us behind to work 10 times harder to try achieve the same levels of economic growth. And then they have the cheek to say that when we've done all the hard work solving the major problems in SA and its starting to become prosperous, then they'll move back and come enjoy the fruits of our labour? I don't like it at all.

Personally, I think most of them with non-temporary visas will never come back. They'll go to NZ, eventually they'll find a nice girl there, get married, have kids there, there kids will have kids there, and they'll basically become genuine New Zealanders. Or Canadians. Or Australians, whatever. I think the "I love South Africa" sentiment will eventually begin to fade. If you live somewhere else long enough, you start to grow roots. And every day you spend there, the roots there grow deeper. The majority of those people are gone from SA, and they are gone permanently. Most of them probably will never even visit here on holiday again, unless its to see family.

I don't like the brain-drain, but how can we stop it? Its become cultural. We've developed an "anywhere but here" mentality that pervades society, it pervades our educational institutions.

The R40billion arms deals have a lot to do with politics, but one big reason for it is to encourage foreign investment. In exchange for money spent in the various European countries, those companies are required not only to spend a certain amount directly on products of SAn companies, but also in various projects for teaching SAn companies various skills. Personally I think the money could be much better spent (e.g. on schools), but the spending motivations are often polical. eliminated poverty in SA tomorrow, that within two years the crime rate would drop by approximately 70%. The remaining percentage would come down to greed etc, which we cannot get rid of anyway.

There is another point I'd like to make though regarding such "greed crimes", and that is that if the overall crime rate was less (the day-to-day "poverty" crimes that are keeping our police force busy), then the police would also have more time and resources to spend fighting white-collar crime, "greed" crimes etc, and thus the "greed crimes" percentage would also decrease.

live in fear of neither

Of course :) We would all rather live in fear of neither. But neither the problems or the solutions are simple. We need to do a lot of work in this country to solve these problems. But I would rather try help solve them than just leave and go live in a 1st world country. At the most basic levels, we need to tackle widespread poverty, and secondly we need to tackle widespread education (normal book and school type education) quality issues. Like it or not, we do need "transformation", because even 8 years on we are still living in a world where whites dominate the economy and are the "educated elite", and unless we can genuinely transform the country (i.e. actually educate the black people that get affirmative action jobs), the blacks will not generally perceive things to have changed, and if a large enough proportion of the black population starts to feel like "whites still dominate" and that "things haven't changed", then we may end up being Zimbabwe version 2. We need to solve these problems.

How many people are detained in prison awaiting trial, because the cant afford bail, I'm not a betting man but some would put money on it, that it is a heck of a lot more than 10 000. What about them?

Its true, of course, but this cannot really be compared to detaining 10 000 people simply because they might be involved in trying to topple apartheid. Also, the police are probably not actively torturing and beating the detainees, as they did with the Soweto uprising prisoners (at least, nowhere near the same level). Additionally, many of the detained that were tortured and beatn were schoolchildren. It's an entirely different problem, really, and once again it comes down to inadequate resources to cope with the excessive scale of the problem, rather than deliberate malice. The previous government tried to imprison and torture activists, while the current government is trying to do things right, trying to improve the judicial system, to cope with the backlog etc. I remember not too long ago the court employees over here even decided personally to put in many extra hours to try cope with the backlog.

Well I bet the half a million laid off over the last few years don't see themselves as better off, you're going to tell me that they are white

It may be useful to keep in mind that the same thing is happening all over the world. Over a million people have lost their jobs since September 11 in the US alone. The world economy is slowing, or one might rather look at it as, re-adjusting to reality.

The job situation may have deteriorated in SA, but even so, white people are still fussy about the types of jobs they are willing to take. When last did you see a white garbageman? White toilet cleaner? White petrol pump attendant? I haven't seen a single one of any of the above in Pretoria. This particular aspect of white culture in South Africa is unique in the world, as far as I know. In other rich countries like the US, even skilled people like programmers are willing to swallow their pride and flip burgers for a while if necessary. We have developed a "cultural expectation" of not working shitty jobs, and by and large, by utilizing emmigration, we tend to be able to meet that expectation.

Aids deaths, Aids orphans, Zimbabwe .. problems that will really start to hit us during the next ten years, you are right. The next 10 - 15 years could well be the most challenging period ever for the new South Africa. I've made up my mind though to stay here and help.

That's a result of Thabo Mbeki's "quiet diplomacy". SAsupplies Zimbabwe with electricity, SA has loaned them big money, if SA wanted to they could have yanked the leash and Zimbabwe wouldn't have got into such a deep mess

I personally don't think that Mbeki has any power whatsoever over what is happening and what is going to still happen in Zimbabwe. Everyone is blaming Mbeki for not doing anything, everyone is saying "Mbeki should do something". But Mbeki is not in control here, Mugabe is. Mugabe is the one with the agenda, the one pulling the strings, the one making the decisions, and lets face it: he does not care what anyone thinks of it. The fact is, if Mbeki opts for "quiet diplomacy", it will not work (as can be seen, Mugabe ignores it). If Mbeki were to "get tough on Zimbabwe", what do you think would happen? Do you HONESTLY think Mugabe would say "Oh gee I've seen the error of my ways, I'm changing"? No way. Mugabe would just stand up and say "Mbeki is obviously just a porn of the collonial British government, and we're going our own way, with or without SA". Thats a fact. If Mbeki pull the plug on electricity, on economic loans, all that would happen is that Zimbabwe would deteriorate much faster. I mean, think about, if Mugabe really cared about his economy turning to shit, would he still be pursing his current course of action? No. Clearly he doesn't care.

That is my rather hopeless-looking analysis of the Zimbabwe situation. I truly believe that SA does not really have any power here, unless we go USA-style and invade Zimbabwe. Which isn't going to happen, and its probably a bad idea anyway.

You make the point of white people complaining and emigrating problem is that if things get too bad people do emigrate, and the people that can emigrate are exactly the people the country needs to stay, its all the fault of ANC who are only to happy to see this happen, Australia hasplenty of ex- SA's already, New Zealand is bit easier to get into, and Canada just loves the doctors it gets at a bargain rate. As I said they love this situation. SA on the other hand does not love this situation, you say so what when some white business mangets hijacked, complains, nothing gets done, you telhim to emigrate, guess what he will emigrate!

As far as I can tell, most SAns are not emigrating because they were victims of crime. They are emigrating because they are looking for a more comfortable lifestyle in a country which is more "sorted out" and has fewer problems. Emigration appears to have become a cultural thing, driven these days almost entirely out of its own momentum. What I mean by that is, its become the "norm" to emigrate, people now do it simply because its the "norm", without even paying much consideration to why. When you graduate from University, its almost a case of people ask you not if you are going, but where you are going. When people ask me and I tell them I'm staying, they look at me like there is something wrong with me.

Don't get me wrong, I think the brain drain is a huge problem economically. I noticed something interesting, up until now its mostly been whites leaving, and the government has just stood by quietly and let it happen, without saying anything. A new problem is emerging though .. now that Universities are starting to graduate skilled black people, many of those black people are now also emigrating, for pretty much all the same reasons the whites are leaving. And now suddenly, Mboweni stands up the other day going off about how big a problem the brain-drain suddenly is, and how he thinks the government should be working much harder at trying to keep skilled workers here. Shock, horror, black people are leaving too, and suddenly "its a problem" :(

One thing that annoys me about the emigrants is that they appear to be the biggest patriots. They seem to be the ones who are saying the loudest how much they love SA. "I love SA, I could just never live there" --- WTF? Thats bull, in my opinion. If you emigrate, its because you think that "somewhere else is nicer", period. They act like refugees or something. If you think "somewhere else is nicer", then don't put up a website saying "I love South Africa, I would like to live there again someday". They leave for selfish reasons. They go provide their (relatively) cheap labour to help already-developed nations develop even further. They leave the rest of us behind to work 10 times harder to try achieve the same levels of economic growth. And then they have the cheek to say that when we've done all the hard work solving the major problems in SA and its starting to become prosperous, then they'll move back and come enjoy the fruits of our labour? I don't like it at all.

Personally, I think most of them with non-temporary visas will never come back. They'll go to NZ, eventually they'll find a nice girl there, get married, have kids there, their kids will have kids there, and they'll basically become genuine New Zealanders. Or Canadians, or Australians, whatever. I think the "I love South Africa" sentiment will eventually begin to fade. If you live somewhere else long enough, you start to grow roots. And every day you spend there, the roots there grow deeper. The majority of those people are gone from SA, and they are gone permanently. Most of them probably will never even visit here on holiday again, unless its to see family.

I don't like the brain-drain, but how can we stop it? Its become cultural. We've developed an "anywhere but here" mentality that pervades society, it pervades our educational institutions.

The R40billion arms deals have a lot to do with politics, but one big reason for it is to encourage foreign investment. In exchange for money spent in the various European countries, those companies are required not only to spend a certain amount directly on products of SAn companies, but also in various projects for teaching SAn companies various skills. Personally I think the money could be much better spent (e.g. on schools), but the spending motivations are often polical. But back to comparing with apartheid, they are in this respect certainly no worse than the previous government, who drained this country dry spending billions and billions on projects like the Rooivalk, the nuclear program etc.

Re:Actually

[error0x100]

Something weird happened to that above post, parts of it seem repeated in odd ways :) Slightly over-zealous cut-n-paste of my own post, or something.

Just a question, ever since I moved (from MWeb) to ABSA internet, I seem to get a lot of "document contains no data" error on slashdot. Whats weird is that slashdot is the ONLY web page I have problems with now, everywere else everything works as normal. Do you find you get strange errors from /. from within SA?

Re:Actually

[Zuidera]

Well I often have reasons for saying what I say, I also have a lot more reasons
and a lot more to say, but I'm in a busy period at the moment.

You don't have to agree with everything, everyone is entitled to their own
opinion, whether their opinion is right or not is generally a very different
matter.

Besides we have a come a lot closer than were we started off.

About culture well not sick as in baby raping, but that came along with AIDS,
and the belief that Having sex with / raping a virgin will cure Aids.

On the other hand if you refer to violence or theft, I have more comments on
that. For instance you can say "oh the naughty white people subjugated the black
people when they arrived in South Africa"

Well the black people only took the land away from the Khoi and San people,
there's a pile of handy evidence in the form of bushmen paintings in caves across the
country eg Drakensburg, by the time the white people rocked up on the scene ,
the KhoiSan had already been pushed into the west of the country.

Building the Zulu nation was not peaceful either as it was done by conquering
the neighbouring tribes. I'm sure some surrendered but things must have been bad
because the Matabele (IIRC) decided to leave SA and that's why they are in Zimbabwe
today, they may now be regretting that move.

Further north I know for a fact that neighbouring villages (encouraged / aided
by Arabs) fought each other with the victors giving the losers to the Arabs as
slaves in return for their help. Canabalism did exist (and this including hunting
and killing people) and still does in the DRC, did you know if you eat your enemy's
(fore)arms you get his power? Although some woudl say don't knock it until you've
tried it is not a tradition that I'd care to foster.

Tribal societies are not big on individual property rights, to this day there is
still communal ownership in SA, everything belonged to the tribe, very hard to steal
things that belong to you, therefore there was no "theft" as there is today.

A lot of these things were stopped / severely reduced by the interfering
colonialists.

I really don't know how bad the brain drain is, but I know that the sanctions on
SA hurt it badly, of course what is so stupid about sanctions is that the entire
economy suffers, which means that the entire workforce (civilian population)
suffers. The only way this can bring about change is indirectly - it agitates the
masses, when you are unemployed you may as well join the struggle.

I wish I had studied history if you know where to look you can find out many
interesting things. I am currently wondering what impact the fact that most of the
liberation movements in Africa (including the ANC - heck they are still in an
tripartheid alliance with Cosatu & the SA Communist Party) had socialist /
communist ideals. There is no denying that the Soviet Union & China backed the
liberation movements - some of the "liberation movements" leaders died there,
they were educated there, they got arms from there, etc.

There was less chance of the old order allowing communists take over South
Africa than you jumping to the moon. Talk about caught between a rock and a
hard place.

Then the Soviet Union dissolves about 1990, suddenly communism doesn't work
anymore, and the ANC had to rethink its ideas / policys. Fortuitous, I think so.

About my good point, thank you - you'd be amazed how many people don't look at
the complete picture they can only interpret events / circumstances in
isolation (often out of context). That and a lack of common sense certainly do
not help the world. So many stupid problems so many simple answers but not
enough implementation.

Aids policy. Yes I believe that it is definitely incompetence. I agree the
leadership is not what it should be, some of the best black leaders got out of
politics and into business, where they undoubt ably do quite well with their
struggle credentials, the governments economic empowerment policies etc.
That is why they left they could get further in business than in politics.

I think the same, incompetence is what is ruining SA, preventing it from getting
anywhere near its true potential. Eg the Defence force, has gone from being the
most powerful on the continent to number two or three. No arms deal is going to
fix that there is already a shortage of pilots etc.

The government does not understand that it is about skills, know how, and
training not just equipment. Besides as there is not enough budget for fuel
they don't get to do as much flying as they should.

About genuine transformation (I hate this word it is so unspecific it could mean
anything) define an amount of the variable you would like to see under black control
in a certain number of years and I'll tell you if I think it'll happen or not.
My bet is say 50% in ten years that won't happen.

If that's what they want in ten years and is all their patience will stretch to,
they will run out of patience.

School children in prison. Does someone who is of school going age and who
should be in school count? Because the prison system is a total stuff up (See
Groot Vlei inquiry into prisons.) There are so many juveniles (ie under 18 and
should be in school) in with the general adult population.

Then there are the babies in prison, normally born in prison to their inmate
mothers or newly born when their mothers are put in prison.

I hardly think the situation has been improving (Desai commission)in the prisons
and Dullar Omar was working the wrong kind of magic in the judicial system.

While I sympathise with some of what the government is trying to do, trying on
its own is not nearly good enough, unless you succeed you are not helping
things or getting anywhere. Its a very bad thing. It could be infectious the
whole of Africa seems to get it eventually, by far the majority have been
stuffed up through war or mismanagement, Angola, DRC, Mozambique, Zambia,
Zimbabwe, Malawi, that's southern africa.

West africa has had some fun as well recently siera leone, Ivory Coast, Nigeria
seem to be able

to spawn enough fraudsters / drug pushers for export purposes. I recall Somalia,
Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea in east Africa, and that is a very incomplete
list, I only really care about Southern Africa, once you get a few thousand
kilometres away I stop paying close attention.

People laid off. I was talking pre 11 Sep. Don't recall white garbage men /
toilet cleaners / petrol pumpers unless you count owner / managers or self
employed, although still no toilet cleaners.

How about delivery drivers, I've done that, quite a few guys doing that to make
ends meet after being laid off / retiring. While doing that I met a lot of
white security guards. I don't know if that's quite equivalent but guarding
stuff (especially in SA) is dangerous.

Besides at an exchange rate of ZAR10+ = USD 1 I know lots of people who go to UK
, US to work these same shitty jobs because when they come back they actually
have some money.

Can't say that if I was eg an ace computer programmer with a degree in Computer
Science, and couldn't;t get anything but a shitty job in SA that I wouldn't
rather go work a shitty job in the US so that I could pay off my borrowings
quicker, and and if I was offered a green card and a real job I would take it.
Law of self preservation.

One must also bear in mind that SA is following an economic policy of low
inflation controlled by a high interest rate of course high interest rate means
low growth, its supposed to lower inflation but that's not happening so why
bother you basically have stagflation (except minimal growth does exist).
People want jobs they couldn't care about inflation especially as now they have
no jobs and inflation.

Mugabe and Mbeki. You are correct that Mugabe doesn't care about his economy, he
is clinging to power, and things are quickly getting really bad in Zim (think
"the house is burning" and I'm not just referring to farm houses).

Interestingly enough, on SABC Africa they had a Zimbabwean n and he let slip
that "we (in zim) were only liberated when Mbeki came to power" in other words
they were scared of misbehaving with the apartheid government next door, and
they were even scared of the government of national unity under Nelson Mandela.
That says more than I care to think about.

Another thing about Mbeki is that large parts of the world think he's a fool, eg
the middle east. Who's he kidding about the African Century / Nepad. He won't
fix the leaks in his own roof but he wants to renovate the whole block, roof
first block later mr president.

However If I was president of SA I would have told him "I'll put you in the
worst SA prison if you don't come quietly and live on this farm in the middle
of nowhere in SA." If he ignored that and he couldn't be grabbed, I'd have him
shot. I do not feel that this is unreasonable as 6 million are starving in his
country due to his actions and policies, and "drought" or no drought there has
been no starvation in that country since it was colonised, and there have been
plenty of droughts during that time. Add to the 6 million the damage done to
the economies of the surrounding countries. And warning him of imprisonment /
assassination and I'd think he'd listen and if he didn't his successor sure
would.

Emigration and crime. Have you ever traveled over "thah beeg watah" or even to a
neighbouring country? I've done both and I've felt safer in every country than
in this one, although I don't think Zimbabwe counts anymore. Might have been
scared of their driving eg two trucks, one overtaking the other on a bridge,
while you are driving towards the bridge, talk about "applying the brakes"

and the two trucks still bumped into each other in order to avoid causing a
three vehicle accident. Other people who have been overseas have told me that
"you can let your guard down" (after a few days) and when you come back there
is conscious readjustment process which you must undergo. I felt exactly the
same thing and this after 3.5 weeks.

This could be a reason why it has become the "norm".

Mboweni is a funny guy

"Patriots" I see what you are saying. They should be honest and say "there are
things I like / love about SA, but the bad outweighs the good as far as I am
concerned, and I am unwilling to take the good with the bad"

They are selfish but self preservation is a difficult thing to overcome, I'm not
one who is into self-sacrifice.

Putting down roots overseas yes it'll happen, they may come back on holiday
though.

Arms Deal. I am aware that counter trade deals are a big thing apparently they
were big in the USSR as well, apparently they didn't work too well. And I can
tell you one thing for sure is that no one's pulled a fast one on those
Europeans. they've done their sums all right, there will be some investment in
SA, but believe you me its all in the price (just like an infomercial).

I think it could be better spent as well. The other thing about paying them
(Europe) is that most of R40bn leaves SA and then stays in europe. If we spent
if locally it would spend a lot more time in the country, mr helicopter
designer who lives in pretoria buys a house the guy who sells the house, buys
another house and some furniture, the guy who sells the furniture pays his
workers and

spends the rest on sending his son to University of Pretoria. The money stays in
SA and does more, maybe that's what the counter trade deal is supposed to help,
but the europeans nailed SA on the trade agreement (port, sherry), I bet they
made out big on this too recalled all the Merc's at discount prices eg half
off? Besides what do we need submarines for?

But your comparison to the "imports" arms deal of the apartheid "in house"
weapons program brings us pretty much full circle, things may have changed, but
they have stayed the same.

And of course we've just trashed SA's reputation between us.

But hey I figure out that "plain old text" works better than html.

Re:Actually

[Zuidera]

Well either the government is out to get you, you a crypto provider?

Or something is wrong with your setup or perhaps the ABSA POP in you area.

You on Windoze? Internet Exploder / Nutscrape?

Re:Let's get this over with.

[Gordonjcp]

Good work, sir. A fine meta-troll, and a shining example to us all.

Re:What about credit card numbers? (HUH?!)

[jc42]

> Where does this leave a free OpenSSL mirror (not selling anything)?

Well, I'd bet that they would consider this a "sale" that requires registration.

If not, then the law is pointless. As a vendor, I could just say "I'm only selling the hardware; the encryption is free." Sellers love to give things away "for free", if you only get the free things by paying for something else.

Whether they could actually impose a registration fee on openssh.org isn't obvious. Who would they extradite and toss in jail?

There's still the prospect that a clueless SA computer user will use encryption without realizing the fact. How many people realize that when you order a CD or a shirt from a web site, you are using encryption? But you can be sure that the software installed at the ISP will notice your encrypted messages.

Unless you can present a receipt for the registration fee for your encryption library, what defense do you have when they come knocking on your door?

Re:Help Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn how to troll, dumbfuck.

Start with The Art of Trolling