The Spanish Inquisition Returns: Draconian Laws Makes Protests, and Doing Anything At All Illegal

Three laws were recently approved in Spanish Congress. Widely criticized by the opposition and human rights groups, these include: The Penal Code, the new Anti-Terror Law and the Law on Citizen Safety. These three will challenge freedom of expression on the Internet and everywhere else in the real world, with all three laws scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2015.

Citizen “Safety” Law

Under the new Citizen “Safety” Law, or more commonly known as the Ley Mordaza (Gag Law) as human rights defenders have come to refer to it, public protests, freedom of speech and the press and documenting police abuse will be seen as crimes punishable by fines and/or jail. Some details regarding the penalties regarding the so-called Citizen Safety Law:

• Photographing or recording police – 600 to 30.000€ fine.
• Peaceful disobedience to authority – 600 to 30.000€ fine.
• Occupying banks as means of protest – 600 to 30.000€ fine.
• Not formalizing a protest – 600 to 30.000€ fine.
• For carrying out assemblies or meetings in public spaces – 100 to 600€ fine.
• For impeding or stopping an eviction – 600 to 30.000€ fine.
• For presence at an occupied space (not only social centers but also houses occupied by evicted families) – 100 to 600€ fine.
• Police black lists for protesters, activists and alternative press have been legalized.
• Meeting or gathering in front of Congress – 600 to 30.000€ fine.
• Appealing the fines in court requires the payment of judicial costs, whose amount depends on the fine.
• It allows random identity checks, allowing for racial profiling of immigrants and minorities.
• Police can now carry out raids at their discretion, without the need for “order” to have been disrupted.
• External bodily searches are also now allowed at police discretion.
• The government can prohibit any protest at will, if it feels “order” will be disrupted.
• Any ill-defined “critical infrastructure” is now considered a forbidden zone for public gatherings if it might affect their functioning.
• There are also fines for people who climb buildings and monuments without permission. (This has been a common method of protest from organizations like Greenpeace.)

The Citizen Suppression, I mean Safety, Law even affects internet freedoms, such as tweets calling for demonstrations or protests. Organizers may be subject to fines and penalties. While an individual user may not be considered “an organizer” because he did not actually do anything to set up the event, it could still be construed to include anyone who disseminates a call to protest through any media, including social media.

“This is the worst cut of rights and freedoms since the Franco regime,” – Virginia Pérez Alonso, PDLI

As the Ley Mordaza makes it illegal to publish photos of the police or other authorities without permission, sharing images of police brutality or police corruption could also be considered a felony, the sharer fined up to 30,000 euros.

The Citizen Protection Act is rather ironic. It’s almost as though politicians thought they could name a law that allows them to grind people into beef patties the “Happy Fun Time Super Rainbow Law” people would buy into it. <cough>PatriotAct<Cough>. How does restricting the freedom of your own citizens in every respect protect them? North Korea, eat your heart out.

Penal Code Reform

Changes to the Código Penal  have been rather vague… and controversial, to say the least. Below are some of the more controversial aspects.

1.Copyright and Downloads

Reform of the Copyright Act was already approved, but the Penal Code reform also covers cases of copyright infringement,  imposing a penalty of six months to four years imprisonment for those who “facilitate access or localization” of works that are being shared without permission of the owners, intending to obtain some form of financial reward.

Another section refers to those who “intentionally store copies of works” for use in public communication. Article 270 mentions imprisonment for those who provide methods or systems to remove anti-copy protection of specific content.

The new Penal Code imposes imprisonment from six months to three years those who, for commercial purposes, “manufacture, import, put into circulation, design, produce, adapt or perform to facilitate the removal or circumvention of any technical device that was used to protect computer programs or any other works.”

2.Revenge Porn & Child Pornography

The new Penal Code imposes penalties for revenge porn and child pornography. Under Article 197 terms for incarceration because of revenge porn ranges from three months to one year. Article 189 significantly changes the definition of child pornography. It refers to any material real or simulated whose protagonist “seems to be a minor” except in cases where they are proven to have been eighteen years or older at the time of depiction. It also explains that “accessing a sexually explicit website containing content that appears to be a minor may be grounds for arrest and trial.”

This change would broaden the definition of child pornography, allowing the prosecution of anyone who had visited a porn site that might have falsely claimed that a single actress was of legal age (and what of countries with different legal ages then?? Would you be jailed for watching Russian porn?).

Further, simulated (drawn) pornography can have a wide interpretation of age regarding any simulated individual, and should the police have an agenda it can be interpreted as illegal regardless of the characteristics of the simulation. This further broadens the net to include nearly anybody who watches simulated pornography.

Wearisomely, these changes and indeed every aspect of the three laws places the impetus on the oblivious consumer/demonstrator rather than the purveyor of illegal activity/terrorist. The target has shifted from the minority… To everybody.

3.Cyberactivism

Together with the Citizen Slaughter- err, Safety Act, the new Penal Code will also criminalize online activism and organizing by imposing sentences between three months to one year to those who “emit slogans or messages”, “incite any offense of disorderly conduct,” and are accused of “disturbing the public peace.”

Distribution of messages or slogans that incite the commission of any offense of disorderly conduct under Article 557 of the Penal Code, or serve to reinforce the decision to carry them out, through any medium, shall be punished with a fine of three to twelve months or imprisonment from three months to a year.

This change effectively suppresses ANY form of protest; an organizer, or even a person who reposts the original call to protest, may intend a peaceful protest. However, he could be imprisoned because the wording he had used was too passionate. Further, organizers cannot control the behavior of every single protester. Police could simply make use of a single provocateur and have him engage in “disorderly conduct” to have the entire movement imprisoned for “Inciting any offense of disorderly conduct”. Also, simply chanting a slogan is illegal; no chanting, no disorderly conduct, no distribution of messages…. They may as well come out and ban protests altogether!

4.Anti-Terrorism Law

After the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France, Partido Popular and PSOE decided to seize the opportunity to amend the criminal code on terrorism. This law contains purposefully vague language, allowing a rogue government the freedom to suppress their people by any means necessary.

The new law uses a broad definition of “terrorism”.  Among other things, cyber-crime is now considered a terrorist act if the goal is to disrupt and/or disturb the public peace or cause a state of terror. An attack on a Ministry website, defacing it or posting anti-government sentiments on it will now be considered a terrorist attack.

Viewing web pages with content targeted for or deemed as “suitable for terrorists” in a habitual manner can carry a penalty of two to five years in prison, but the law does not specify what is “habitual” or which websites are being targeted…. Indeed, twice visiting a website advocating human rights or even the alternative media can be deemed a terrorist activity.

By expanding the definition of terrorism, it also expands what can be considered “glorifying terrorism”. Retweet an ISIS tweet in order to show that their organization is absurd? You’re a terrorist too! Claim that people should stand up against oppressive policymakers? Shut up, you terrorist!

Glorification and public justification of crimes under Articles 572-577 or those who participated in its execution or performance of acts involving disrepute, contempt or humiliation of victims of terrorist offenses or their families, shall be punished with imprisonment of one to three years and a fine of twelve to eighteen months.

Paying for technological services will also be considered “collaborating with terrorists”:

Shall be punished with imprisonment from five to ten years and fined eighteen to twenty four months which takes place, soliciting or facilitating any act of collaboration with the activities or purposes of an organization, group or terrorist element, or commit any of the offenses covered by this chapter. In particular acts of collaboration of information or surveillance of individuals, […] the provision of technology services, and any other equivalent form of cooperation or assistance to the activities of organizations or terrorist groups, groups or individuals for the preceding paragraph.

It would seem that Spain too has joined this trend of increasing restrictions on citizen activity via purposefully vague laws. Doing ANYTHING could now be deemed criminal; download a video so that you could share it in class, and you’re jailed for copyright-infringement. Torrent a file and you’re jailed for the same.  Write a Facebook post complaining about the government and you’re arrested as a terrorist. Watch some porn, and you’re arrested as a pedophile. Join a perfectly peaceful protest movement and you face a fine. Should the protest movement prove disruptive in any way, you could be imprisoned for even making a Facebook post on it. Chant a slogan, and you get arrested. Video tape the police as they beat you to a bloody pulp and you face another fine. Hack a government website because you’re tired of it all, and you’re jailed as a cyber-terrorist.

Of course, none of these laws will be used in this manner, seeing how vague they are…. Until you prove to be a threat of any kind to the ruling government that is. Blackmail is an effective weapon, particularly when you could brand whomever you wish a “pedophile-cyber-terrorist”.

You’d better not share this post if you’re in Spain… in fact, you should have gouged out your own eyes before reading this post, you terrorist you.

Source: http://revolution-news.com/spanish-congress-approves-draconian-laws-essentially-sending-spain-back-to-the-dark-ages/