Zim army says cellphones a danger to security
Do we need any further proof that the Zimbabwean government’s repression apparatchiks are incapable of the brain stretch required to grasp the principle of freedom, and the human right to free expression and free speech? The logic and fundemental values simply do not compute in their brains.
Zimbabwe’s military has said the country’s cellphone operators are threatening national security by using independent connections to the outside world, official media reported on Tuesday.
“The mobile-service providers have their own international gateway system, and from a security point of view, this is dangerous to the state because we need to monitor traffic coming in and outside, but at the moment we can not,” the Zimbabwe Defence Forces director for communications, Colonel Livingstone Chineka, was quoted by the Herald newspaper as saying.
Chineka said the three cellphone firms should route international calls through the state-owned fixed-line operator TelOne, and not use their own gateways, in order to make it easier to monitor international traffic.
There was no immediate comment from the three operators.
[...]
Chineka, who was giving evidence on the Bill, said security forces would give their input before the proposed law is passed by Parliament, adding that cellphone operators should be given at least a month to be connected to TelOne’s gateway.
“We want to listen, to make sure the nation is safe. If we liberalise the gateways then it means there would be a group of people who would communicate without our knowledge,” Chineka was quoted as saying by the government-controlled Daily Mirror. (via the Mail and Guardian)
Like he has an automatic sensible right to know who is communicating. Grrrr!
Besides, how can he even begin to imagine that moving everything to TelOne is a viable option? This is what Peta Thornycroft, writing for The Telegraph, said on her blog titled Communication breakdowns yesterday:
Does Zimbabwe have the worst mobile networks in the world? It can take hours to get through to a number, even on the same network.
Zimbabwe’s mobile phone networks are in a sorry state
There are three networks: Econet, Netone, (government owned) and the small Telecel. Econet used to be the good guys, and the people who run it are pleasant.
Their service is as bad as the government monster, and Econet keeps on selling new lines while complaining that it doesn’t have enough foreign currency to keep the network in shape.
The government monster (aka, TelOne) is used as a basic indictor to reflect a status of ‘beyond abysmal and sliding fast’.
I don’t know what Colonel Livingstone Chineka is worrying about anyway, if no one can get through what can they say that’s so threatening to security? Maybe something, very fast like ‘pleasecallmeonalandline…‘ before they’re cut off.
November 29th, 2006 13:46
I think its disgusting what is going on in Zimbabwe right now.
Thabo Mbeki and the African Union should have intervened a long time ago to put a stop to this tyrannical regime.
I hope one day that this situation improves.
November 29th, 2006 17:03
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
what have we done to the world, what have we done to Zimbabwe? Saying sorry to our children is not even worth the words that spell it or the paper thats written on it. Darkness comes before dawn so the saying goes!