CONSTITUTION 20TH AMENDMENT BILL TABLED: DA PROPOSES ESTABLISHING INDEPENDENT ‘CYBER COMMISSIONER’

CONSTITUTION 20TH AMENDMENT BILL TABLED: DA PROPOSES ESTABLISHING INDEPENDENT ‘CYBER COMMISSIONER’

• 14 July 2023
• Parliament
• SA Legal Academy

The DA’s Glynnis Breytenbach has tabled a Constitution 20^th Amendment Bill, the purpose of which is to establish an independent ‘cyber commissioner’.

According to a memorandum on the Bill’s objects, it is envisaged that, over time, the commissioner would replace the Information Regulator. This is noting that:

• state departments and critical infrastructure are not sufficiently protected against cyber threats, and
• are ‘not properly equipped … (for) protecting sensitive public information against hacks’.

Apparently, ‘entities currently tasked with dealing with these problems’ are:

• either underfunded or lack the proper cyber expertise, and
• are ‘scattered across a range of government departments’.

In addition, cyber security legislation ‘is either insufficient or only deals with the consequences’.

The Bill seeks to address these issues and safeguard related ‘basic human rights, as entrenched in the Constitution’. 

This is the seventh private member’s Bill to be tabled by the DA in 2023. Two seek to make amendments to the Constitution.

To date, not a single DA Bill has progressed beyond the standard committee procedure of voting on its ‘desirability’ – although some may have influenced the drafting of Bills later tabled by the executive.

• Bill
• parliamentary papers announcing Bill’s introduction (page 3)

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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