PF points out abuse by Google and Telegram against Censorship PL

In a report sent to the Federal Supreme Court (STF), the Federal Police (PL) concluded that Google Brasil and Telegram Brasil used “impactful and questionable” strategies to warn Brazilian users about the risks of Bill 2,630/20 , which became known as PL das Fake News or PL da Censura.

The inquiry investigating the Big Techs uses as a basis a report produced by Netlab, a research laboratory dedicated to left-wing political activism that operates with public resources within the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ).

The group of activists is openly in favor of the Fake News Bill and has even sent suggestions to be added to the proposal, which, in theory, would compromise its exemption to create a technical report to support the courts and the government.

Even so, it was this opinion that supported the decisions of the STF minister, Alexandre de Moraes, to justify direct interference in Google’s content precisely on the day the bill was scheduled to be voted on in the Chamber, in May of last year.

At the time, due to the repercussions of the warnings from Big Techs and pressure from various sectors of society, the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), decided to postpone the vote on Bill 2630/20.

The day that would be dedicated to voting on the project was marked by the interference of actors from other powers, directly interested in the approval of the bill, who used the power of the State to try to avoid the defeat of the proposal, if it went to the Plenary.

Days before the date scheduled for voting on the project in the Chamber, Telegram sent a message to all its users saying that the project “granted censorship powers to the government”, transferred judicial powers to applications”, “created a permanent surveillance system” and it is “unnecessary”, since there are already laws in force to deal with the crimes that the project aims to combat.

A few days after the postponement of the vote in the Chamber, Telegram was forced by Moraes to delete the message and send another message to all Brazilian users, dictated by the minister himself with a retraction for having made the alert.

Google was forced to remove a warning about the risks to freedom of expression from its home page if the project was approved.