PGR request about Bolsonaro followers is questioned – 07/21/2023 – Politics

The request by the PGR (Attorney General of the Republic) to have access “to names and identification data” of followers of Jair Bolsonaro (PL) on social networks is generic and illegal, point out experts consulted by the Sheet. According to them, the request would infringe on the right to privacy and due process of law.

The request was made on Monday (17) by the PGR to the STF (Federal Supreme Court) in the context of the investigation into the attacks on the headquarters of the three Powers that took place on January 8. According to the Attorney General’s Office, the objective would be to see the reach of publications that encouraged the coup attack.

“Facts that threaten the democratic rule of law need to be investigated, but with a minimum of delimitation of people and the object of investigation”, says Claudio Langroiva, Professor of Criminal Procedure at PUC-SP.

For him, the indiscriminate search for data is a type of intrusion in people’s lives that violates due legal process, the right to intimacy and private life.

“It is necessary to have the minimum delimitation of who would be the suspects of the facts or, at least, what would be the specific universe of suspects that would lead someone to ask a judge for a breach of confidentiality of data in order to obtain addresses, telephone numbers and contacts of these people.”

According to Diego Nunes, professor of criminal law history at UFSC (Federal University of Santa Catarina), the request is inappropriate because it violates the right to privacy and the principle of due process of law.

“What can happen [com o pedido] it’s the phenomenon called fishing expedition, which is you get huge data there and start finding people you hadn’t investigated. That would be unconstitutional,” he claims.

Nunes says that the right thing would be for the investigation to focus on people on whom there are indications of having participated in the illicit act. Therefore, asking for data on all the former president’s followers would make no sense.

Rossana Leques, criminal lawyer and master in criminal law from USP (University of São Paulo), says that, in criminal proceedings, invasive measures can only occur if there are indications that a particular individual is suspected of some criminal practice.

The PGR released a note in which it justifies that the request was made with the aim of investigating the content and scope of the former president’s publications related to January 8. In the note, the Attorney General’s Office states that Bolsonaro’s followers are not being investigated and will not have their data exposed.

Deputy attorney general Carlos Frederico Santos said: “I would never investigate millions of people, it would even be impossible to do that”. On Instagram alone, the former president has 25 million followers.

The PGR document also spoke of identifying, with the respective data, people who have republished investigated Bolsonaro posts and who have more than 10,000 followers, “allowing the measurement of the reach of dissemination”.

“If the intention is to demonstrate the reach of the posts, a separate request could certainly be made, without having asked for individual data from each of the followers”, says Leques.

For her, the request is “clearly generic, broad, it really completely escapes what is expected of a State that values ​​the guarantee of its citizens”.

According to Langroiva, although the investigation deals with an important theme for democracy, it is necessary to respect the procedures authorized by law.

“We cannot accept any actions that do not strictly follow the due process of law and the Constitution. Anything that goes beyond that and comes to injure fundamental rights and guarantees are, if not equal to crimes, worse because they are perpetrated by the State”, he says.