Namibia case study
This case study argues that public oversight, exercised in concert with judicial and media institutions, can result in successful oversight of intelligence driven surveillance that strikes at the heart of the culture of secrecy. The chapter utilises a critical incident to make its argument. In August 2018, in the High Court of Namibia, lawyers acting on behalf of the Namibian Central Intelligence Service (NCIS) and the Namibian government argued on the record that the intelligence agency should ‘be insulated from both parliamentary and judicial oversight’. This striking argument was made in a case in which the intelligence agency was attempting to use an apartheid-era law – the Protection of Information Act 12 (Act 84 of 1982) – to prevent a newspaper, The Patriot, from exposing potential corruption and alleged abuse of resources within the agency. The court ultimately ruled against the spy agency and the government in the attempt to muzzle the media, a ruling that was upheld by the Namibian Supreme Court a year later. The significance of this episode was that it showed that the thinking within the intelligence agency and high levels of government was that the activities, whether lawful or not, of the intelligence service were not and should not be subject to external oversight. This case study, hence, aims to show how the absence of effective democratic, public oversight of the NCIS has positioned it as a constitutional threat, and how the public have attempted to claw back accountability.
Newspaper articles
Frederico Links, ‘SIM card registration and the spy agency’, The Namibian, 13 January 2024
Frederico Links, 'No privacy guaranteed’, The Namibian, 12 March 2024.
Policy briefs
Frederico Links, ‘No privacy, guaranteed: Namibia’s mass surveillance framework is flawed and open to abuse’, Institute for Public Policy Research, March 2024