Journalists raise alarm after MPs pass bill to make publication of police wiretaps illegal

Transcripts of police wiretaps are regular fodder for the Czech media, but perhaps not for much longer. On Friday MPs in the lower house approved a bill that would outlaw publishing transcripts or broadcasting recordings of phone calls intercepted by the police without the consent of the person concerned. If the bill becomes law, newspapers, broadcasters and internet sites would face heavy sanctions, including – in extreme cases - prison sentences.

It was two highly popular Czech actors - Jiří Lábus and Petr Čtvrtníček – who turned transcripts of police surveillance of two corrupt football officials discussing how various matches had been thrown into a work of art. The dialogue of the cult theatre production “Ivánku, kamaráde, muzeš mluvit?” was based almost entirely on the breathtakingly foul-mouthed conversations between the two men.

But such productions could soon be a thing of the past, as could the revelations from police bugging of the late Czech gangster František Mrázek published recently in the Czech media. On Friday the lower house passed – by a large majority – a new bill that not only increases protection of the victims of crime, but also makes it illegal to publish or broadcast evidence from police wiretap operations.

One of the initiators of the bill, Civic Democrat MP Marek Benda, says the legislation is aimed at ending the intolerable situation whereby covert recordings were being leaked to the media even before the case in question had been closed.

Those who fall foul of the new law would face a fine of up to five million crowns, or 265,000 dollars, or in exceptional cases, up to five years in prison. The bill was approved by 149 of the 155 MPs present in the 200-seat lower house, indicating that it has support right across the political spectrum. Perhaps unsurprisingly the proposal is not very popular with Czech journalists. Jaroslav Plesl is the deputy editor-in-chief of the daily Lidové Noviny:

“Well if we come to the conclusion that it’s useful for Czech democracy, then we would definitely go ahead, even though we know that there would maybe be a risk of sending one of our people to jail. Because I think it’s important to undergo this conflict. If they try to prevent us from publishing information we obtain, then we will fight. There is no question about it.”

The bill still has to be approved by the upper house, the Senate, and signed by the president before it becomes law. Critics say politicians would be better off making sure such leaks don’t happen in the first place, and point out that the people responsible for prosecuting the publication of leaked police wiretaps would, ironically, be the police themselves.