President of Lithuania proposes to imprison for life anyone who collects information
President of Lithuania proposes to imprison anyone who collects information
Algimantas Rusteika
Totalitarianism is one step closer. Gitanas Nausėda submits amendments to the CC to the Seimas.
Among others, it proposes to amend Article 119(1).
“1. Whoever, WITH THE INTENT TO TRANSFER TO A FOREIGN STATE, ITS ORGANISATION OR THEIR REPRESENTATIVE, HAS CAPTURED, PURCHASED OR OTHERWISE ACQUIRED INFORMATION WHICH IS A STATE OR SERVICE SECRET OF THE REPUBLIC OF LITHUANIA, OR ANOTHER INFORMATION THAT COULD BE USED in an attempt to undermine the constitutional order of the Republic of Lithuania, sovereignty, territorial integrity, defence or economic power, other interests of the Republic of Lithuania, human health or life, or has communicated any of the aforementioned types of information to a foreign state, its organisation or their representative,
shall be punishable by deprivation of liberty for a term of four to ten years.”
Catch a corner:
- No information has yet been passed on, but the intention itself is punishable.
- It is not just buying or kidnapping, but any “other” gathering of information, i.e. even reading the internet, talking to people, sitting in a library etc.
- It is not only state or official secrets that are punishable, but also “other” information, i.e. public information that is accessible to absolutely everyone.
- It is even punishable for the fact that this public, legal information, available to all, “may be used”, when in fact it has not been used and may never be used.
That’s very much something I’ve heard somewhere, isn’t it, dear people of Lithuania, inhabitants of a “democratic state”?
Come on, let’s turn to the Criminal Code of the USSR and the famous Article 58, under which people were taken to camps and shot by the millions. And let us compare. Here is paragraph 58-6 of that article:
“Espionage, i.e. the transmission, abduction or gathering for the purpose of transmitting information which is a specially protected state secret to foreign states, counter-revolutionary organizations or private persons, includes:
imprisonment for a term of not less than three years, with confiscation of all or part of the property, and, in cases where the espionage has caused or may have caused particularly serious consequences for the interests of the USSR, the highest measure of social protection – shooting or being declared an enemy of the working people, deprived of the citizenship of the Republic of the Union, and hence of the citizenship of the USSR, and expelled from the USSR permanently, with the confiscation of property.
The transmission, theft or collection with a view to transmission to the above-mentioned organisations and persons of economic information, the content of which is not a specially protected state secret but which cannot be disclosed by direct prohibition of disclosure by law or by order of the heads of departments, agencies and enterprises, shall be punishable
imprisonment for up to three years. [6 June 1927 (SU No 49, Article 330)].”
Thus, a one-to-one copy – “collecting with a view to transfer”. There is only one difference.
In the USSR, CC 58-6 punished only the collection of state and service information (there called “economic information”), while even Stalin did not think of punishing the collection of public information, of some clippings from Pravda. Apparently, our people also want to punish people for collecting texts from Delphi.
You know, when you read it, it even makes you think of elementary plagiarism, or is it the same mentality that leads to the same conclusions? Folk wisdom has long said: the apple is from the apple tree, pupils always outperform their teachers, and so on.
