Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has signed into law the Interception of Communication Act, which formalizes the government's ability to eavesdrop on phone conversations, to read people's email and faxes, and generally to facilitate Zimbabwe's full descent into a totalitarian state. The law even requires internet providers to install the equipment to allow the government to intercept emails, thus passing the costs of this nefarious government encroachment onto business.
The government claims that the law is intended to help in the fight against international terrorism and internal espionage, but there is little doubt that the reality is that the access the government wants will almost assuredly be used further to crush the opposition, whether in the form of the already-fractured Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) or other opposition parties that might emerge and pose a challenge to Mugabe's despotic reign.
