I’m an investigative journalist in South Africa... We mainly try to focus on the intersection between business, politics and crime, because that’s where the most damage to the institutional fabric is done in my view.

... One of the things we’ve pointed out is that there’s almost nothing in the legislation that really governs what [surveillance] happens in the private sector. In terms of our legislation, all the private service providers are required by the State to gather and keep this information. So they act on behalf of the state; they are custodians of the data, but there’s very little oversight or control as to what they do with it, and we know from our own experience and a few court cases that private investigators seem to have fairly routine access to communication records, and metadata.

Qn: In your country, what are the main obstacles to accountability and/or redress for HRDs?

The problem is to get behind the veil of secrecy. The courts are important in terms of gaining redress, but you can only go to court if you know what has happened, and that was the bedrock of our case in the High Court and in the Constitutional Court.