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.
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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.