The Constitutional Court confirmed that RICA is unconstitutional to the extent it fails to provide adequate safeguards for the right to privacy under section 14 of the Constitution, including the absence of post-surveillance notification, inadequate independence in the appointment of the designated judge, and no special protections for journalists and lawyers, and held that bulk surveillance conducted by the National Communications Centre has no lawful basis. The declaration of invalidity was suspended for three years to allow Parliament to remedy the defects.

Landmark African apex-court authority on state surveillance and the constitutional limits of communications-interception regimes. It is the first such ruling on the continent to declare a national interception statute unconstitutional and to hold bulk surveillance unlawful, and it functions as the benchmark against which surveillance-law challenges elsewhere in Africa are now measured.