Governments often resort to communications surveillance in order to combat threats against national security. Communication surveillance infringes upon the right to privacy. In order to protect privacy, international law requires communication surveillance to be proportionate. However, very little has been written to justify why this right deserves such protection in Africa, given counter-arguments suggesting that where national security is threatened, the state must be permitted to do everything possible to avert the threat, and the protection of privacy is an inconvenience. This article addresses these counter-arguments by demonstrating that the right to privacy deserves protection because it is as important as defending national security. It analyses approaches taken by selected African countries to regulate authorisation of communication surveillance. This article questions the assumption that prior judicial authorisation is the ideal approach to regulating communication surveillance in order to guarantee proportionality, and it suggests a need to consider other alternatives.

各国政府经常诉诸通信监视，以打击对国家安全的威胁。通讯监视侵犯了隐私权。为了保护隐私，国际法要求对通信进行适当的监视。但是，由于反驳意见表明，在国家安全受到威胁的地方，必须允许国家采取一切可能的措施来避免这种威胁，而保护隐私权却是很少的，因此没有什么文献可以证明为什么这项权利在非洲应得到这种保护。不便之处。本文通过证明隐私权值得保护，因为它与捍卫国家安全同样重要，从而解决了这些反驳问题。它分析了某些非洲国家为规范通信监视授权采取的方法。本文质疑这样一种假设，即事先的司法授权是调节通信监视以确保相称性的理想方法，并建议有必要考虑其他选择。