None of this is to say that the man actually did it. “Innocent unless proven guilty” is, after all, a presumption that exists in Panamanian law. It’s respected by The Panama News now, and was back in 2017 in the article that an “agent” wants censored.
This censorhip request:
And the editor quotes:
Dear PANAMA NEWS Team:
A pleasure to greet you,
With the utmost respect we formulate this request where until today personal information has been published on its website, where my image, my name, etc. are displayed.
In the following URL of your property / administration and / or edition:
https://www.thepanamanews.com/2017/02/is-panama-insulated-from-odebrechts-implosion/
This information threatens my privacy and intimacy, in addition to seriously damaging my honor, my company and my family. Today, it is not acceptable that my full name to continue to be associated with this URL, as I have not given my consent. In addition, it prevents me from a decent life and the possibility of expanding my business on the internet.
Here are the reasons that contribute to corroborate the request:
– The articles in question are seriously damaging the personal and professional scope of Mr. Niño, due to the permanence and easy access of said information on the web.
– The information shared in question is not supported by any decision of a judge declaring the veracity of the facts referring to Mr. Niño.
– Mr. Niño is not the protagonist of the information and his name and surname do not add more to the information presented and nevertheless it harms him.
REQUEST:
For this reason, I require based on the recent Law 81 of March 26, 2019, was published in Official Gazette 28743-A of March 29, 2019, and that according to art. 15.3 and 17 allow me to exercise the right of cancellation, requesting the person in charge of the web page where my personal data is published so negative its cancellation or limitation of treatment (which is, in short, that they are not displayed directly in international search engines such as Google or Yahoo ). Likewise, this new law justifies that, at the request of those affected, those responsible for the web pages must adopt technological measures, such as the use of robots.txt codes or no index instructions, etc. so that the URL in which my obsolete and seriously harmful information appears cannot be indexed by internet search engines and consequently,
That the cancellation of the personal data on which the right is exercised is agreed to within a period of ten days, as established in art. 16 of said Law starting from the collection of this request, and that I am notified in writing of the result of the cancellation practiced, or another respectful solution with the personal data of the injured party such as the cancellation of the link or the replacement of the name and surnames by initials or a technological dissociation or anonymization procedure.
If you have any questions about this process, please contact the National Authority for Transparency and Access to Information of the Government of Panama, on the following website: (http://www.antai.gob.pa/)
Please accept this request and please do not hesitate to contact if you need any supplementary or complementary documentation or information,
At your service,
Amelia Bianchi
Gestor
Everything in this e-mail and any attachments to it is confidential, legally privileged and protected by relevant laws. The person or persons addressed in this e-mail are the sole authorized recipient. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately by return e-mail and delete it from your system. You are notified that disclosing, copying, forwarding, distributing and taking any action in reliance on the contents of this message and its attachments is strictly prohibited. Please note that Internet communication cannot be guaranteed to be secure, timely, error- or virus- free. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message and its attachments which arise as a result of e-mail transmission.
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This probably offends me more as a Panamanian and as a history major than as a journalist, although I would expect that most of the world’s press freedom organizations would also be concerned about what is being attempted here. It’s about the retroactive twisting of a 2019 privacy law to go back into history and censor the record of where Panama has been.
The extended families of former presidents, via scantily disclosed agents like Amelia Bianchi, get to bowdlerize the history of Panama? Wasn’t another avenue by which they did such things the now repealed law wherein criminal defamation cases could be brought allegedly on behalf of dead people, an infamous rule against which journalists for both big and small fought long and hard?
From time to time I get these requests to delete old stories. If there is an error I will run a correction or make a deletion. But failing the showing of probable error, I don’t delete things to please the high and mighty, nor those who perceive themselves to be, nor agents of such.
Eric Jackson
the editor
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