SURVEILLANCE
Tax man spies on staff to catch leakers
Blanket monitoring has been conducted for more than a year
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...
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