Tax man spies on staff to catch leakers
The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is spying on its staff’s e-mails to catch any that are sent to media organisations.
The blanket monitoring, which has been conducted for more than a year, includes computers‚ cellphones and the transmission of e-mails‚ SMSs and WhatsApp messages. It is being carried out by a specialised team in SARS’s information technology department.
The monitors are looking for and flagging staff e-mails that contain certain keywords and are sent to the e-mail domains of several media houses. Among the domains looked for are the e-mail addresses of the Tiso Blackstar Group‚ the owner of Business Day, The Times and the Sunday Times.
According to documents seen by The Times‚ media houses whose e-mail addresses are not monitored are those belonging to the Gupta family: The New Age newspaper and ANN7.
The monitoring was on the instruction of senior management, SARS sources claimed.
SARS spokesman Sandile Memela said the monitoring fell within the bounds of the organisation’s policies.
But staff representatives feel the monitoring goes too far.
Khaya Xaba, a spokesman for the National Education‚ Health and Allied Workers Union‚ one of two unions that represent SARS employees‚ said the union was opposed to any “illegal acts” or the unwarranted monitoring of employees’ e-mails.
“This is an invasion of privacy,” Xaba said.
“While we appreciate that members signed a secrecy oath‚ that does not give SARS the authority to invade our members’ privacy.”
Privacy and labour lawyers said that while monitoring was allowed‚ it called into question how far companies could go in terms of monitoring staff‚ their work and private equipment and why only e-mails to certain media houses were monitored and not others.
A SARS source‚ who revealed the existence of the monitoring to The Times‚ said it had destroyed staff morale.
“Some of us who wish to blow the whistle on things going wrong here, cannot do so. We do not trust the police because they will simply go to management and expose us.”