The Chamber of Deputies approved a bill this week that would make public information accessible to citizens. The text now passes to the Senate.
In response to the recent debate over TV content, several members of Parliament have proposed measures to censor and regulate media. The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) has expressed concern about possible governmental interference in the media's editorial decisions.
Twitter users in Mexico City have angered authorities by tweeting the locations of roadside Breathalyzer checkpoints, and kidnappers and drug traffickers are using Facebook and MySpace to communicate. Federal lawmakers have responded by proposing a bill to restrict social networking sites and to create a police force to monitor them, GlobalPost reports.
Chile's Law of Transparency and Access to Public information, which took effect last April, is helping national and international organizations that are seeking information about people who disappeared during the military dictatorship. Those people include U.S. citizen Boris Weisfeiler, Inter Press Service reports (in Spanish).
The Forum on the Right of Access to Public Information changed its composition and resumed activities to face threats against public transparency and to monitor compliance with the Access to Information Law (LAI, for its acronym in Portuguese) in Brazil.