provisions of the Constitution. She also welcomed the fact that the current version
of the draft Bill criminalises the transmission of intimate images and media
without consent which is a breach of a person’s right to privacy. This is a welcome
development because cases of sharing of intimate images without consent have
previously been reported to the Police but none of these reports have led to any
successful convictions.16 It should be noted that the current version of the draft
Bill does not specifically criminalise “general” pornography, the draft Bill only gives
a definition of what amounts to pornographic material. Pornography is however,
criminalised under the Censorship and Entertainments Control Act [Chapter 10:04].
Other changes Jacqueline spoke about include those made to the criminal act
of cyber-bullying and harassment; the current version of the draft Bill criminalises
only the generation and communication of electronic communication which
harasses another person. This is different from the first version of the draft Bill
which only criminalised the initiation of electronic communication which harasses
another person. The current draft Bill narrows down the number of incidents
where investigating officers can ask for a citizen to assist them in the investigation
of either a cybercrime or computer crime. During plenary, Otto raised the point
that assistance can only be rendered with the consent of the court. Furthermore,
the search and seizure provision has also been restricted in scope and is not as
wide as it was in the first two versions of the draft Bill.
In conclusion, Jacqueline argued that the 2017 version of the draft Bill had made
strides towards respecting the spirit of the Zimbabwean Constitution but more
still needed to be done to improve the draft Bill. She also applauded the drafters
for taking into consideration some of the input and comments made by other
stakeholders. Lastly, she stated that there was need to work on provisions which
still permitted the use of keystroke loggers which are wrongly classified as forensic
tools when in actual fact they are privacy breaching tools.

16 For example, the two former Miss Zimbabwe title holders who were stripped of their crowns after intimate images of them
were released. In both instances police reports were allegedly made but to date there have been no arrests or convictions in
either case.

23

Misa Zimbabwe Second Internet Governance Multi
Stakeholder Conference 21 September 2017

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