Opinion – Ronaldo Lemos: AGU has not learned lessons about fake news

As my colleague Elio Gaspari likes to say, the AGU (Attorney General of the Union) crossed the street to be able to step on a banana peel. In general, decrees dealing with the regimental structure of the AGU are bland documents that do not generate much public attention. Even because the definition of what the AGU does derives from the Constitution, and there is not much to change.

Only this time it was different. Someone decided to innovate in the regimental structure of the AGU by creating a “Prosecution for the Defense of Democracy”, capable of acting on “demands and procedures for responding to and confronting misinformation about public policies”. A trip to Singapore will be won by whoever knows how to define disinformation about public policies.

As this concept does not exist in the law, it gained an improvised official definition: “voluntary, intentional lying, with the clear objective of jeopardizing the correct execution of public policies with prejudice to society and with the objective of promoting deliberate attacks on members of the Powers, with lies that effectively hinder the exercise of their public functions”.

Using the concept of “lie” as a legal category implies defining its opposite, which is the concept of “truth”. And in that sense, the last figure in the Republic that should define what is true or false is the Executive Branch. Because telling lies is not illegal. If it were, there would be more people in jail than outside.

Having made the criticism, what should then be done? In the first place, remember that one of the great achievements of Marco Civil was to ensure that the Executive Branch did not interfere with what is posted on the internet. This attribution rests with the Judiciary and the Legislature. It’s best that it stays that way.

So much so that the 1988 Constitution itself, by creating the Social Communication Council (of which this columnist was once a member and vice-president), made it an advisory body to the National Congress, and not the Executive. The attributions of the Executive Power regarding society’s communications are limited and are very well defined in the chapters that deal with the subject in the Constitution.

The same thing happens with the powers of the AGU, which are also well defined by the Constitution. Any action by the body on the subject of disinformation would necessarily have to be implicit in the existing Powers. Wanting to define new attributions explicitly (and in an imprecise way and without support in complementary law) seems to be an unsuccessful attempt to expand the competences of the AGU.

All of this hints that the lessons that really matter about combating so-called “fake news” have not been learned. The fight that is desirable (and that works) is the fight against methods of misinformation, not the content itself. It is necessary to combat the hidden financing of disinformation campaigns. Combat coordinated inauthentic behavior, which needs money, robots and technological resources to happen.

It is not the fight against “lies” or individual content that “misinforms public policies” that will work. In other words, in the fight against fake news, it is necessary to attack the roots and not the leaves. AGU wanted to buy a brand new cannon and point it at the leaves. It’s not going to work.

It’s over – fighting individual content to fight fake news

Already – realize that the fight against fake news depends on understanding how they are articulated and funded

It’s coming – fake news generated by artificial intelligence, with the potential to flood the internet and its platforms