The Brazilian Senate rushes to approve a draft bill that seriously undermines privacy and free expression. Named as the "Fake News Law," PLS 2630/2020 aims to tackle an intricate problem, whose responses must be carefully designed in a democratic and participatory manner. Contrary to the Brazilian Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, law approved in 2014 with broad and intense social participation, PLS 2360/2020 is marked by a rushed debate, during a time of exceptional operation of legislative activities due to the COVID pandemic.
After an alarming and not officially filed version of the text was almost put to a vote last Tuesday, the bill's original author presented a substitute text, and there are other proposals under discussion. Seeking to curb the spread of disinformation online, the bill lacks precision to avoid abusive reporting and interpretations. It also creates criminal offenses, prohibitions, and obligations that hamper legitimate ways of expressing ourselves online and severely expose users' communications.
We want to emphasize some of the bill’s most concerning points:
Providers Are Required to Retain the Chain of Forwarded Communications for a Year
Social networks and private messaging applications would be obliged to keep the chain of all communications that have been forwarded tracking all its nodes, regardless of the distribution of the content was done maliciously at the source or along the chain. This is a massive data retention obligation, which affects millions of users instead of only those investigated for an illegal act. Although Brazil already has obligations for retaining specific communications metadata, the proposed rule goes further. Know ..
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