There are critical shortcomings in the police’s surveillance capabilities. Daily Maverick spoke to a number of intelligence insiders about the dire condition of spy equipment, and the outlook is bleak. Be it intercepting communications, pinpointing hate speech originators on social media or intercepting calls and phone location data in the field — police are working with the bare bones. Observers say the problem is political.
Read more in Daily Maverick: “Tracked, Part One: With its hamstrung surveillance capabilities, SAPS is no match for criminals”
South Africa has earned a spot as a top destination for organised criminals. In the world of trafficking guns, drugs, minerals, poached wildlife and human beings, SA ranked 19th out of 193 United Nations member states. That’s according to a recently published two-year study from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Part of the reason for criminals’ free rein, intelligence insiders who spoke to Daily Maverick and were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, is that the South African Police Service (SAPS) and its Crime Intelligence Division (CI) are largely deprived of a crucial tool when tackling complex, well-organised syndicates: electronic communications surveillance. WhatsApp calls and texts, emails, Skype, and even just tracking suspects’ movements in the field are out of law enforcement’s reach.
What’s up, WhatsApp?
A long-standing headache for SAPS and CI is their inability to decrypt and read data messaging, particularly end-to-end encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram.
Encryption, simply put, is a way to protect the content of a message. Roughly speaking, software is applied to scramble the message before it is transmitted, and again decipher it after it arrives at the receiver’s smartphone or computer. It’s crucial to privacy and cybersecurity, but it hamstrings an ill-equipped SAPS.
In a 2021 report to Parliament, the judge appointed to watch over South Africa’s interception laws warned of the desperate spy technology shortcomings SAPS faces. The judge (also known as the Rica judge) is responsible for granting SA’s intelligence services warrants to allow interception of mobile phone communications and internet traffic. She does this in terms of Rica — the Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act.
Several issues were brought to the Rica judge’s attention by SAPS Crime Intelligence, most related to what’s known as the Office of Interception Centres (OIC) — the national interception hub that falls under the auspices of the State Security Agency (SSA), SA’s main spy organisation. There are various ...