Miami (September 24, 2008)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today voiced concern at a bill introduced to congress by Brazil’s executive branch that would amend the rules regulating wiretaps and make it an offense punishable with imprisonment for journalists and news media executives to divulge information obtained from wiretaps without a judge's authorization.
The chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, offered support for the arguments made by Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers (ANJ) criticizing the bill introduced by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government which would set ground rules for unlawful wiretaps, a move that the organization said “directly affects freedom of the press and amounts to nothing less than an authoritarian and undemocratic proposal.” Marroquín, editor of the Guatemala City, Guatemala, newspaper Prensa Libre, explained, “This amendment, apart from penalizing the unlawful conduct of government officials engaged in telephone wiretapping, at the same time unfairly places the blame on journalists for divulging information that may have been leaked to them and which could be of public interest. In consequence, what is really jeopardized is the people’s right to be informed.” The proposed law, currently under debate in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of Congress), would make it a criminal offense for individual journalists, the press and their news sources to divulge either lawful or unlawful phone taps without court authorization.
