Law enforcement officials' perceptions of RICA as legislative tool to combat crime

Abstract

Regulation of the Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-Related Information Act (RICA) was enacted in 2002 to regulate the monitoring and interception of communications and to assist law enforcement officers in gathering evidence. This exploratory study aimed to gain an understanding of the perceptions of law enforcement officials towards RICA as a crime combatting tool. One of the main findings of this study was that the implementation and compliance to RICA was the central concerns raised by law enforcement officials. The study found that non-compliance to RICA resulted in outdated and inaccurate information being kept and supplied to law enforcement from Telecommunication Service Providers (TSPs). The findings of the study also uncovered that unregistered SIM cards (especially pre-paid) SIM cards also provided law enforcement officials with methods of communications without being detected especially during intelligence gathering operations. In terms of compliance shortcomings of RICA the following are recommended to make RICA more effective to law enforcement:  There needs to be a concerted, joint effort between affected South African government departments to make sure compliance to RICA is compulsory and occurs correctly and  Concurrently South African TSPs should be obliged to not allow local or foreign SIM cards to access their networks which have not been correctly registered as per RICA. In terms of the RICA application process itself the following are suggested:  More approvers of RICA applications need to be made available, either more retired judges need to be appointed or a panel of judges.  The RICA process for law enforcement officials need to standardized, where the automation of the process up to the approval judge would decrease turnaround times vastly.