More than 20 nongovernmental organizations ask Parliament and the parliamentary commissions to remit the draft law to amend and supplement a number of legal acts to ensure information security and combat offenses involving the use of information technology to the Venice Commission for appraisal. The NGOs also request the legislative body to broadly consult the bill that, according to them, extends the control of the law enforcement bodies over the information area with civil society and to adjust it so as to create an efficient legal framework for combating crimes against minors, IPN reports.
The NGOs made an appeal by which they request Parliament to ask for the assistance of the development partners in analyzing the European good practices for implementing the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime.
Civic society is concerned that the given bill can have negative consequences on the basic human rights. The signatories of the bill consider the bill offers the law enforcement bodies extended powers in case of a long list of offenses, the principle of private life protection and the freedom of expression not being respected.
“We realize the importance of combating the sexual abuses against children and terrorism and do not challenge the necessity of improving the legislation in this filed. However, the bill goes beyond the pursued objectives and allows room for abuses,” reads the appeal.
The signatories said the special investigation measures should be separated for different types of offenses, including by their degree of social danger, which is much lower in the case of offenses against copyright and related rights. The bill allows for general surveillance instead of the specific and directed one and does not create guarantees for the observance of human rights.
The appeal was signed by the Legal Resources Center of Moldova, Amnesty International Moldova, the Independent Journalism Center of Moldova, Rise Moldova, the Resource Center “Dialog-Pro”, Bios, the Association of Independent Press, the Transparency International Moldova, the Association “Promo-LEX”, the Association for Efficient and Responsible Governance, East Europe Foundation, Terra-1530, the Public Policy Institute, etc.
