‘Chilling’: Journalists warn against EU legislation allowing press surveillance

Members of the press are warning about legislation being drafted in the European Union which would give the government carte blanche to spy on journalists to uncover their sources.

In its original text, the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) proposed last September would allow the media certain safeguards against the government. That includes protection against state surveillance to uncover journalistic sources, particularly with the use of spyware. According to the bill, “the Act will add a targeted robust safeguard against the deployment of spyware in the devices used by the media service providers or their employees.”

The government would, however, have allowances to spy on reporters on “a case-by-case basis” in the interest of “national security,” or to investigate “serious crimes,” which could include theft and music piracy.

But for some countries, these allowances do not go far enough. Last month, France proposed a blanket provision that would allow any EU country to deploy spyware on members of the press "without prejudice to the member states’ responsibility for safeguarding national security." The measure was backed by Germany and the Netherlands and is included in a litany of amendments to the EMFA.

In an open letter to the Council of the European Union last week, 62 organizations including Reporters Without Borders warn that the law threatens freedom of the press, who are “the public watch-dogs in our democracies.” Allowing such state surveillance, they explain, will have “chilling effects on civic spaces.”

In the letter, Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Panyi describes the likely consequence of the amendment:

Technical forensic analysis of my phone showed that the Pegasus spyware had been running on my device for seven months. My surveillance impeded my right to protect my sources of  information. I am an investigative journalist who relies heavily on information from whistleblowers. In increasingly repressive political environments, like in Hungary, where media is under government control and pressure, whistleblowers and leaks are the only way left for  investigative journalists to uncover the truth. This is exactly why, under the pretext of vague and bogus national security reasoning, surveillance is used against journalists in Hungary. It has an enormous chilling effect, and could make our work impossible. EU leadership in Brussels must realize that any EU citizen, whether a journalist or a source of a journalist, can become [the] subject of illegitimate surveillance if certain member states always get away with using ‘national security’ as a free pass. This makes the EMFA even more essential in protecting the rights of journalists and freedom of the press.

“Through this new provision, the Council is not only weakening safeguards against the deployment of spyware but also strongly incentivises their use based solely on Member States’ discretion,” added the letter.

The proposed amendments will be brought to the European Parliament to be finalized.