MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Presidential “backtracking”.
President Néstor Kirchner yesterday justified his decision to suspend a decree requiring telecommunication companies to monitor customers' calls and Web-surfing habits, saying that “he did not know when he signed it that it implied violation of privacy rights” protected by Argentina's Constitution.
The government announced on Tuesday that Kirchner is next week expected to issue a new presidential decree quashing a previous one to regulate Law No. 25,873, passed in 2003.
"We never thought (the decree) was invading individual rights to intimacy," said the President in a radio interview from Germany, where he is on a five-day state visit. "In the face of the faintest doubt regarding its constitutional status, we have decided to scrap it."
His decision to backtrack on the much criticized e-control decree, which was to come into effect on July 31, followed an escalating public outcry against the law, which was designed to curb crime.
The law was passed on December 17, 2003 with almost no debate in Congress and Kirchner on November 9, 2004 issued a decree regulating its implementation.
Foreign Minister Rafael Bielsa, meanwhile, said that the President's decision to quash his own decree was "very healthy" because the e-control measures, he said, "violated some rights clearly protected by the Constitution." "It is very healthy to backtrack on one's own steps when you notice that they contradict higher values," said Bielsa.
On Tuesday, Cabinet Chief Alberto Fernandez announced the decree would be overruled, citing "a confusion" when it was signed by the President. He added that the government will work on a "more perfected norm."
The law called for Internet providers to make their traffic available for "remote observation" by Argentine authorities and called on companies to archive information on e-mail and chat communications for up to 10 years.
Telecommunication companies were also required to register who calls and who receives a call, however long the communication lasts, when the caller was phoning from at the time of the call, websites visited, chat rooms, e-mails sent and received.
Government officials defended the initial legislation, arguing its intent was to monitor Internet traffic and not it's content.
The legislators who drafted the law, meanwhile, have defended it, saying that the distortions came from its regulation ? the small print of how the law is enforced, which is written by the Executive.
Lower House Majority Leader José María Díaz Bancalari (Peronist-Buenos Aires), the law's author, said that the congressional version does not even list Internet in the media up for scrutiny, which is limited to telephone and cell-phone communications. (BAH)
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rulesCommenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!