PGR requests archiving of the investigation against Google and Telegram for alerts

The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) asked the Federal Supreme Court (STF) to shelve the investigation that investigates alleged abuse of Google Brasil and Telegram Brasil due to alerts aimed at Brazilians about the risks of Bill 2.630/20, which was known as PL das Fake News or PL da Censura.

The statement was sent to the STF on Friday (16) and was signed by the Deputy Attorney General of the Republic, Hindenburgo Chateaubriand Filho.

At the end of January this year, the Federal Police sent a report to the STF stating that the companies used “impactful and questionable” strategies to issue alerts and considered committing the crime of violent abolition of the Rule of Law by those investigated, in addition to indicate that the motivation of the companies would have been “merely economic”.

According to the PGR’s statement, “the dissemination of ideas contrary to the provisions of the legislative proposal is not sufficient to constitute the crime of violent abolition of the Democratic Rule of Law (art. 359-L of the CP).

“The type of criminal offense suggested by the representative presupposes the intention of abolishing the Democratic Rule of Law with the use of violence or serious threats, and it is also necessary to prevent or restrict the exercise of constitutional powers. The elements brought by the investigation do not allow us to conclude that the crime in question has occurred, as there is no proof of the use of violence or serious threats in the conduct”, says an excerpt from the document obtained by People’s Gazettethis Monday (18).

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

“In the same way, the overload of the information systems of the Chamber of Deputies and the significant search for contact between society and elected parliamentarians do not constitute, in isolation, the attempted rupture invoked. Said conduct, on the contrary, highlights the legitimate exercise of representative democracy, marked by the use of the means of communication made available by the legislative house with the aim of establishing a relay of ideas from voters to elected officials. Any excess use of this instrument does not imply an offense to the democratic regime”, says another excerpt from the PGR demonstration.

Now, it is up to the STF minister and rapporteur of the action, Alexandre de Moraes, to analyze the positions of the PF and PGR and decide the future of the investigation.

Alerts

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”, “transfers Judicial powers to applications”, “creates a permanent surveillance system ” and 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.