Review panel for Info Bill

The Protection of Information Bill is back in the spotlight in parliament, with the focus on a new panel that will have the power to decide if information has been wrongly classified.

The proposed law - dubbed "the secrecy bill" - has been widely criticised for giving the state wide powers to classify information, and for punishing people who publish that classified information, even if it is in the public interest.

Last month, after labour federation Cosatu threatened to challenge the bill in the Constitutional Court, the ANC agreed to restrict the power to classify information to state security agencies. Initially, about 1000 organs of state, from ministries to public museums, would have been given the right to classify information as secret, but now only security organs may do so.

But opposition parties and civil society groups say a key problem in the bill remains: it provides for information to be classified in the interests of "national security" but it is not clear what exactly national security is.

The parties have now agreed that the bill should include a new classification-review panel of five people to be appointed by the state Security minister to oversee the classification of information.

No political party leaders or officials will be allowed to sit on the panel, which will have powers to instruct organs of state to declassify information if it believes that it should not have been made secret.

Nkwame Cedile, Western Cape co-ordinator of the Right2Know campaign, said: "The ANC has conceded to our demand that they set up an independent body of constitutional experts who can oversee what gets classified. This is a temporary victory for us."

DA MP Dene Smuts and African Christian Democratic Party MP Steve Swart insisted that the panel "have teeth".

ANC MP Lluwellyn Landers moved yesterday to counter allegations that government departments that wanted to hide corruption would simply classify information.

Landers said the ANC wanted to increase the penalties in the bill for those who misused classification to cover up wrongdoing.

But Cedile said this did not go far enough and it was likely that, if the bill were passed, there would still be attempts to classify information in a bid to cover up fraud and corruption - even if the offenders knew they faced penalties.

Rhodes University journalism professor Jane Duncan said last month that, even with the ANC's new concessions, it would be "extremely difficult, if not impossible, to ensure transparency of the most shadowy of all state structures, the security cluster".

The parliamentary discussions will go on for the rest of the week. The bill is due to be finalised by the end of September.