What are the chances this law actually passes before the assembly is dissolved and there's an election?
The government is a minority government, running the country in a failed coalition. Does it have the votes to ram this through?
The government is a minority government, running the country in a failed coalition. Does it have the votes to ram this through?
According to the description by another commenter (who calls this post "pure propaganda"), this seems a lot like that sort of a messy process, and is being deemed necessary in order to enable police body cams (which seems like a wokewashing.)
edit: a sign would be if this legislation as sold as being both so important that it has to be passed now, and so trivial, procedural, and boring that there's no reason to discuss it.
The government presented a single law package covering police bodycams, wider surveillance, AI, biometric and police drones. I can only understand this mixing together of disparate issues as a way to diminish public debate and perception around some of them.
The bodycam issue ended up capturing most of the media attention, in part because it involves labour issues, whereas AI or biometrics are much more technical and harder to approach journalistically. I think this is why you find the drive to pass police bodycams -- they're trying to pass a lot of things under the rug, and bodycams just happen to be a convenient talking point to remove focus from others.
Initially, it seemed like a done deal because of the likely support of the major opposition (PSD, centre-right), which has advocated for wider surveillance in other contexts. Its leader also has a history of being strong on policing and surveillance as former mayor of Porto.
However, in the last few days the PSD is apparently distancing themselves from government, e.g. recently u-turning and siding with the left opposition to approve compensating pensions for the disabled against the ruling party's (PS, centre-left) position against it.
Today, the PSD demanded that only the bodycam mandates and wildfire monitoring portions are put forward in order to vote favourably. This means putting aside the AI, biometrics and surveillance provisions. If this stands, the most concerning parts of the law would not go forward.
But in Portugal we're now in a pre-election moment, where positions might flip and statements easily get reversed, so we're bound to have a thrilling few days ahead until the final vote by the end of the month.