Critics fear that in the future, citing national security, states will be able to break source protection more easily with technical spying equipment than before. Finnish officials are full of worries.
European an agreement was reached in the union on Friday on an important EU regulation on media and freedom of expression, reports news agency AFP.
On Friday evening, there was still no precise information about the details of the agreement reached by the EU Parliament and the member states. Parliament and the member states still have to formally approve the regulation.
It is suspected that the regulation, when implemented, will lower the threshold for breaking suppliers' source protection by means of technical device intelligence.
Having investigated the matter According to Euobserver magazine Finland and a number of other countries, led by France, were pushing for a provision that would facilitate criminal investigations against journalists using spy programs, if the journalist is suspected of endangering national security.
Dispute has been between the Council and the Parliament made up of member states.
The Council is pushing for stricter regulation than Finland also represents. The Parliament, on the other hand, wants a broader record of breaking the source protection.
According to HS's information, the Ministry of Justice in particular has insisted that the part of the regulation concerning national security will no longer be changed.
To be special what makes it controversial is that the media freedom regulation is originally intended to improve and protect the media's operational possibilities.
It is aimed especially at protecting media in countries with limited media freedom, such as Hungary.
Interest organizations in the Finnish media sector were worried a couple of years ago, when the media freedom decree was being prepared. In Finland, by European standards, there is quite extensive source protection and functioning media practices, which have been feared to be weakened by the upcoming regulation.
Uutismedia Union's legal representative Ismo Huhtanen said before Friday's agreement that the main dispute in Friday's negotiations was koskimedia's freedom of action and also source protection.
Source protection means that the journalist does not have to tell who provided the information in the news. This aims to ensure that, for example, various abuses and other socially significant issues can be brought to the public without the parties reporting them having to fear the consequences.
According to the law, source protection can only be breached in certain types of trials involving sufficiently serious crimes.
Multi The EU parliamentarian suspects that the proposal put forward by the Council would lead to the fact that, under the guise of national security, it would be easier than before to break the source protection and start monitoring the journalist's activities with technical aids.
Matters concerning national security are usually classified. Based on them, governments could monitor journalists if they wanted, without ever finding out the reason for the monitoring.
However, in the Council's proposal, a technical criminal investigation would require special reasons and permission from a court or judge.
The previous one in the line concerning the media freedom decree, i.e. the letter u, approved during the government's tenure, there were still concerns about spyware.
“The State Council considers it necessary that, during the regulation negotiations, efforts are made to find out more precisely the content of the proposed regulation regarding the right of media service providers not to be subject to the use of coercive measures or spyware,” the u letter from 2022 reads.
The letter, completed on December 8 of this year, no longer mentions the spyware. Officials think the whole term is wrong.
“As a new position, the Government considers it important to maintain sufficient national room for maneuver in questions concerning the use of coercive means and the protection of sources. The State Council draws attention to the fact that the source protection personnel circle must be as specific and appropriate as possible,” the new addendum to the u-letter reads.
“In the negotiations, the socially important interests related to high-level source protection and crime prevention and investigation should be taken into account in a balanced way,” the text continues.
Even the new one according to the policy, Finland considers it important that the level of source protection of suppliers, which is internationally high, does not deteriorate.
Parliament hasn't even had time to deal with the change in Finland's line, even though a key negotiation is taking place now.
of HS according to the information, the media freedom decree has been discussed little or not at all between the governing parties anyway.
It is reported from the media industry that the security authorities have been more influential than the parties. The discussion about the content of e-letters, for example, has mainly taken place between officials of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, which has the main responsibility, as well as the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior.
“The media freedom decree is being prepared by the Ministry of Transport and Communications. There has been some discussion on the matter at the official level, as far as the Ministry of Justice is consulted,” says the Minister of Justice Leena Meri (ps) for HS.
Transport- and the inspector general who prepared the matter at the Ministry of Communications Eero Salojärvi says that he does not know where Euobserver got the impression that Finland would support allowing spy programs citing national security.
“The national security mentioned in the article has not been a threshold issue for Finland, but Finland has hoped that the negotiations will generally stay as close as possible to the Council's compromise proposal. This is mixed in the article with the fact that Finland would actively push for that national security provision,” says Salojärvi.
According to Salojärvi, during the negotiations, it was clarified in more detail that the term espionage refers to technical equipment monitoring. Because of this, the term “espionage” can cause misleading ideas.
He says that, according to the Government's assessment, the tightening of the fourth article proposed by the European Parliament could have a significant impact on the investigation and fight against national crimes.
“It is still key, in accordance with the original letter u, that the national high-level source protection does not weaken.”
Media setting has been handled by the Ministry of Transport and Communications, but the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of the Interior have also helped, especially with regard to the dispute clause.
Special expert of the Department of Criminal Policy and Criminal Justice of the Ministry of Justice Joni Korpinen thinks that even if the Council's view supported by Finland were to pass, it would hardly weaken Finland's high level of source protection.
Korpinen says that the parliament has instead proposed changes that could at worst weaken the current national crime investigation and prevention.
“The risk of certain changes proposed by the Parliament could be practically unconditional source protection, which could also be unbreakable in, for example, serious crimes against life and health.”
Korpinen says that the regulation hardly expands the powers of the authorities, for example, with regard to secret means of coercion in Finland.
Law already allows, for example, technical equipment monitoring under certain conditions also in criminal investigations concerning suppliers.
According to the Coercive Measures Act in Finland, technical device monitoring means, for example, non-exclusively sensory monitoring of the data contained in a computer in order to investigate a crime.
“In practice, the use of certain means of coercion in relation to source protection can only come into question when it comes to so-called extremely serious crimes, for which the harshest punishment is at least six years in prison.”
Korpinen says that the purpose of the media freedom regulation that is being prepared is above all that journalists should not be pressured to reveal their sources by threatening coercive measures.
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