Rodrigo Guimaraes Colares*

The Brazilian Congress is currently discussing a bill which intends to criminalise some damaging activities committed through electronic means such as internet, well known as the Cybercrime Bill. If on one hand it is important to have legal basis for punishing activities harmful to society, on the other hand there is a major concern that in the next few days it can be approved by the Brazilian Senate a bill which its discussions were not transparent to the public, did not count with participation of important sectors of society and adopts uncommon premises for the Brazilian legal system.

Under Senator Eduardo Azeredo’s (PSDB-MG) responsibility, the Cybercrime Bill replaces three precedent bills regarding the same subject. Its official text, which is now being discussed in the Senate’s Commission for Constitution and Justice (CCJ), is not known by the society, so it cannot suffer public scrutiny. Taking that fact into account, the Commission for Information Technology of the Brazilian Bar Association in Pernambuco, which counts with a Working Group for Cybercrime, sent on May 26^th, 2007 an electronic mail to Senator Azeredo, aiming to analyse and propose enhancements to the bill. Nevertheless the Commission has not received any response from the Senator yet.

On June 20^th, 2007 it will take place in Brasilia D.C. a public audience to discuss the bill. That was supposed to be a multistakeholder forum where interested parties could have an opportunity to express their opinion in regard with the Cybercrime Bill. However important organisations concerned with the topic were not called to the audience, such as the Brazilian Bar Association, IBDI (Brazilian Institute for IT Law and Policy) and SaferNet Brazil, among others. After the audience, the Cybercrime Bill, which its official text is not known by the general public, might just be approved by the Brazilian Senate.

According to Senator Azeredo, the Brazilian Cybercrime Bill was inspired on the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe. Opened to signature of other States, this Convention was not ratified by any European country with economic and political relevance excepting France. During its elaboration, which counted with the active participation of the United States, the text was severely criticised by several organisations, which argued that it could cause offence to individual's right to privacy. Laws that present that sort of restrictions normally appear in societies concerned with issues like terrorism, which definitely is not the case of Brazil.

In opposition to what happens in individuals’ private life, everything which is public should be treated with the maximum transparency and publicity. Unfortunately the course that takes the Brazilian Cybercrime Bill seems to be the erroneous one. It can still be remedied by adopting transparency measures and creating new opportunities for public scrutiny before its voting by the Senate. It results paradoxical that a bill inspired by an international convention on cybercrime, based upon principles capable of causing restrictions on cybernauts’ right to privacy, is not made public.

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