48 173. The Court underscores that the American Convention recognizes the right to associate freely and, at the same time, establishes that the exercise of this right may be subject to such restrictions established by law that have a legitimate purpose and that, ultimately, may be necessary in a democratic society. In this regard, the system established by the Convention is balanced and appropriate for harmonizing the right to associate with the need to prevent and investigate possible conduct that domestic law characterizes as criminal. 174. In this case, the Court finds it has been proved that the State intercepted and recorded the telephone conversations of the two social organizations without respecting the legal requirements; it failed to comply with its obligation to safeguard the private information intercepted and disseminated this without judicial authorization, all in violation of Article 11 of the Convention in relation to Article 1(1) thereof, to the detriment of the victims, who were members and leaders of COANA and ADECON (supra paras. 146 and 164). Even though the State affirms that the interception of the communications was not contrary to freedom of association, because it sought a legitimate purpose - the investigation of an offense - according to the documents in the case file, there is no evidence that the purposes declared by the police authority in its telephone interception request, namely, the investigation into the death of a member of COANA and the alleged diversion of public funds, was really what it was seeking. 175. The Court notes that Major Neves indicated, when requesting the termination of the interception, that the “monitoring carried out up until [that] date had already achieved the required results,”156 despite the fact that it had not led to progress in the investigation into the death of Eduardo Aghinoni or into the diversion of funds, which were the supposed reasons for the telephone interception, or in any other investigative action by the police or other State authorities of any kind. Moreover, in the report on the results of the interception sent to Judge Khater, Major Neves did not include or refer to any conversation related to the facts allegedly investigated, but only indicated extracts of conversations that, according to this official, confirmed that a member of MST had infiltrated the Military Police.157 176. The Court also notes that, in the summaries of the recorded tapes, none of the segments highlighted by the police authorities bears any relationship to the investigative purpose indicated in the interception request.158 177. In addition, the Court observes that State officials and entities indicated that the interception request did not seek the declared objective. Thus, in the file of the monitoring petition, the agent of the Prosecutor General’s Office indicated that the “telephone interception did not have a specific objective[, but] sought to monitor MST activities, by coincidence, at the time the government [of Paraná] had decided to move settlers from rural properties [in the region].”159 The report of the disciplinary organ of the Civil Police of Paraná on the actions of the Military Police in the telephone interceptions of COANA and ADECON endorsed this when it states that “there is strong evidence that the [said] interception, although disguised with a veil of legitimacy (owing to the existence of the questionable judicial authorization), had intrinsic objectives that were not authorized by law, thus constituting the offense established in Article 10 of Law [9,296/96].”160 156 Cf. Request for suspension of telephone interception of May 25, 1999, supra note 78, folio 2138. 157 Cf. Report of delivery of 123 tapes, supra note 83, folio 2143. 158 Control sheets of the recorded tapes, supra note 85, folios 2147 to 2160. 159 Brief of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of September 8, 2000, supra note 84, folio 2219. 160 Opinion of the Disciplinary Body of the Civil Police of the state of Paraná of July 7, 1999 (file of attachments to the answer to the application, tome II, Attachment 18, folio 2369).