Key Benefits:
Parliamentary Group
PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY No. 1/X
CONSTITUTION OF AN EVENTUAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY
PARLIAMENTARIAN TO THE PROCESSING, PROVISION AND
DISCLOSURE OF TELEPHONE CALL RECORDS
PROTECTED BY THE OBLIGATION OF CONFIDENTIALITY
The January 13, 2006 was released by the newspaper "24 Hours" a list of
208 phones whose 80 thousand calls between December 2001 and May 2002
have reportedly been communicated by the PT in the context of a judicial process and included
in constant diskettes of your "Envelope 9". Among these phones were to include
the one of the President of the Republic, that of the President of the Assembly of the Republic, of the
Prime Minister and several other members of the Government, of the Presidents of the
Supreme Court of Justice, the Supreme Administrative Court and the
Supreme Military Tribunal, the Ombudsman, a former President of the
Republic, of the responsible for the secret services, of Speaker of the Chamber, of
Deputies and many other personalities. None of these personalities
was being surveyed or investigated in the context of the said process.
The President of the Republic did on the same day a communication to the country
considering the subject of the greatest gravity, having stated that " the rights,
freedoms and guarantees of the Portuguese are an essential pillar of democracy, which
has to be preserved, without breaks nor hesitations ", adding that
" violations to the reservation of private life, be it through illegal telephone wiretapping,
whether through records of telephone calls or other forms equally
intolerable meddling in the private reserve of the Portuguese, they cannot
pass in clear "and informing you have still required" enquiries [that] are
ultimatum to curtissimo deadline ".
These recordings of telephone calls are protected by the duty of
confidentiality imposed by the concession contract of the PT (article c of the article
6º, Decree Law 31/2003 of February 17) and still by the Law of Protection of
Personal Data (numbers 1 and 3 of Article 47º of Law 67/98 of October 26). The
violation of this law constitutes a crime and, to the extent that this may be prescribed,
is exclusively remitted to the political scope the requirement of the clearance
of the responsibility, which only Parliament can obtain through a Commission
of Inquiry.
In fact, Parliament has a duty to follow up and guarantee the exercise
of the freedoms and to scrutinise the fulfilment of the institutional duties that the
ensure. In this case, those freedoms were violated and the responsibility for
such a violation must be clarified.
This being the case, the Parliamentary Group of the Left Bloc proposes to the
Assembly of the Republic the following deliberation:
1-A Assembly of the Republic approves the constitution of a commission
possible of parliamentary inquiry to the processing, provision and
disclosure of records of telephone calls protected by the obligation to
confidentiality;
2-This Commission has, in particular, for the purpose of determining:
a) how it is established and updated by the PT the account of the client state,
who has access to that information and how their confidentiality is
protected;
b) under what conditions was the PT requested to provide information on the
registration of telephone calls;
c) what is and how does the supervisory mechanism in the PT work on the
processing of information concerning telephone call records
confidential or specific accounts;
d) who were responsible for the selection, processing and
provision of the constant information of these diskettes;
e) what was the established research procedure to deal with
later that information;
f) if any of the procedures throughout this process violated the laws and the
guarantees from or the subscribers of these phones.
Assembly of the Republic, October 4, 2006.
The Deputies and Deputies of the BE,