{"id":97899,"date":"2005-04-28T19:37:00","date_gmt":"2005-04-28T19:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.moldova.org\/2005\/04\/28\/new-bill-on-state-and-professional-secret-might-be-a-hard-blow-to-freedom-of-expression-2253-eng\/"},"modified":"2005-04-28T19:37:00","modified_gmt":"2005-04-28T19:37:00","slug":"new-bill-on-state-and-professional-secret-might-be-a-hard-blow-to-freedom-of-expression-2253-eng","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moldova.org\/en\/new-bill-on-state-and-professional-secret-might-be-a-hard-blow-to-freedom-of-expression-2253-eng\/","title":{"rendered":"New bill on state and professional secret might be a hard blow to freedom of expression"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

More than one mass media organization from the Republic of Moldova is worried about the new bill on the state and professional secret that was elaborated by the Security and Information Service (SIS), approved through the Government’s Decision and presented to the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova for examination. <\/p>\n

According to a joint statement signed by nine mass media organizations, this act was elaborated secretly without involving the civil society structures in the process and without taking into account the current international practice and provisions of the national normative acts. "The authors of the new project took over more than one provision from the Law on state secret in force and partly from others, including a number of vague, ambiguous chapters and articles with a large margin of interpretation, aiming at maximally restricting the public’s access to official information, inclusively to professional information," say the authors of the statement. <\/p>\n

According to the bill, the secret information is "the information protected by state in the fields of public authorities’ activity, whose divulging or loss can defraud the public authorities or the state. Thus, the notion enables to conceal arbitrarily any official information, as it threatens "to defraud public authorities." <\/p>\n

The bill also envisgaes that when "employing, appointing or electing for a public position, the citizen commits himself to keep the professional secret. A really hard blow, in the opinion of mass media organizations, is the exclusion from the project of the parliamentary, inter-departmental and departmental control, of the supervision exerted by the prosecutor regarding the defense of the state secret, necessary and existent provisions in the Law in force. This control will be performed by the leaders of public authorities and to the enterprises of their interior subdivisions protecting the secret information and to SIS. Even the president of the country was deprived of any mandate to attribute the quality of state secret to any information and to protect it. <\/p>\n

If the new project is adopted, it will be a hard blow to the freedom of expression. It will affect catastrophically people’s access to information of public interest and will hinder the process of society’s democratization. Yet, it will stimulate corruption and wrongdoings of the functionaries of all levels that will have unlimited possibilities to hide themselves behind this law on professional secret protection. <\/p>\n

Asked by REPORTER.MD, editorialist, political analyst Petru Bogatu underlined that this bill is a Bolshevik bad habit, as it defies the European standards regarding the access to information from two points of view. Firstly, the concept of state or professional secret is normal for Europe, but it is badly defined in the mentioned bill. <\/p>\n

In Bogatu’s opinion, the adoption of this law will permit the public functionaries to hide any information under the pretext of professional secret. Secondly, this project is an abuse because it was elaborated by the Security and Information Service (SIS), which is not a political institution and has no right to launch political initiatives, it interfering thus abusively in the legislative process in general. <\/p>\n

In his turn, director of the Journalistic Investigations Center, Cornelia Cozonac, stated that the respective bill will do nothing than legalize the concealment of information which, according to the legislation in operation, does not belong to the category of secrete information. <\/p>\n

“I think that when examining and adopting this bill, the Parliament that considers itself a democratic one should organize public debates with the participation of journalists and representatives of civil society and take into consideration their opinions and ideas,” underlined Cozonac. \/\/REPORTER.MD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>More than one mass media organization from the Republic of Moldova is worried about the new bill on the state and professional secret that was elaborated by the Security and Information Service (SIS), approved through the Government’s Decision and presented to the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova for examination. According to a joint statement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"content_social_share":"Reading Time: <\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>

More than one mass media organization from the Republic of Moldova is worried about the new bill on the state and professional secret that was elaborated by the Security and Information Service (SIS), approved through the Government’s Decision and presented to the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova for examination. <\/p>\n

According to a joint statement signed by nine mass media organizations, this act was elaborated secretly without involving the civil society structures in the process and without taking into account the current international practice and provisions of the national normative acts. "The authors of the new project took over more than one provision from the Law on state secret in force and partly from others, including a number of vague, ambiguous chapters and articles with a large margin of interpretation, aiming at maximally restricting the public’s access to official information, inclusively to professional information," say the authors of the statement. <\/p>\n

According to the bill, the secret information is "the information protected by state in the fields of public authorities’ activity, whose divulging or loss can defraud the public authorities or the state. Thus, the notion enables to conceal arbitrarily any official information, as it threatens "to defraud public authorities." <\/p>\n

The bill also envisgaes that when "employing, appointing or electing for a public position, the citizen commits himself to keep the professional secret. A really hard blow, in the opinion of mass media organizations, is the exclusion from the project of the parliamentary, inter-departmental and departmental control, of the supervision exerted by the prosecutor regarding the defense of the state secret, necessary and existent provisions in the Law in force. This control will be performed by the leaders of public authorities and to the enterprises of their interior subdivisions protecting the secret information and to SIS. Even the president of the country was deprived of any mandate to attribute the quality of state secret to any information and to protect it. <\/p>\n

If the new project is adopted, it will be a hard blow to the freedom of expression. It will affect catastrophically people’s access to information of public interest and will hinder the process of society’s democratization. Yet, it will stimulate corruption and wrongdoings of the functionaries of all levels that will have unlimited possibilities to hide themselves behind this law on professional secret protection. <\/p>\n

Asked by REPORTER.MD, editorialist, political analyst Petru Bogatu underlined that this bill is a Bolshevik bad habit, as it defies the European standards regarding the access to information from two points of view. Firstly, the concept of state or professional secret is normal for Europe, but it is badly defined in the mentioned bill. <\/p>\n

In Bogatu’s opinion, the adoption of this law will permit the public functionaries to hide any information under the pretext of professional secret. Secondly, this project is an abuse because it was elaborated by the Security and Information Service (SIS), which is not a political institution and has no right to launch political initiatives, it interfering thus abusively in the legislative process in general. <\/p>\n

In his turn, director of the Journalistic Investigations Center, Cornelia Cozonac, stated that the respective bill will do nothing than legalize the concealment of information which, according to the legislation in operation, does not belong to the category of secrete information. <\/p>\n

“I think that when examining and adopting this bill, the Parliament that considers itself a democratic one should organize public debates with the participation of journalists and representatives of civil society and take into consideration their opinions and ideas,” underlined Cozonac. \/\/REPORTER.MD<\/p>\n

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