According to Carlos Affonso Souza, lawyer and director of the Institute of Technology and Society (ITS), the secrecy imposed by Jair Bolsonaro's government is not imposed by decree, “but it is an administrative decision that refuses access to a public document because it contains private information”.
ADVERTISING
This is established through the Access to Information Law (LAI). Sanctioned on November 18, 2011 by then president Dilma Rousseff (PT), the law ensures the fundamental right of access to information, with “secrecy as an exception”.
A survey carried out by the agency Stay in the know for AFP, of all requests for information already denied under the Access to Information Law since 2015 (from when the data became available), it shows cases falling within the “one hundred years of secrecy” during the Bolsonaro government.
O president's vaccination card, its covid-19 tests and medical prescription in the treatment of the disease, visits to the first lady, Michelle Bolsonaro, in the Alvorada Palace and the controversial case of documents about the participation of general Eduardo Pazuello in an act with the presidentio.
ADVERTISING
And how is access to information restricted?
The deadline is evaluated at administrative level by a server, which decides whether or not certain information is characterized as personal according to article 31 of the law, after a request for access to information, which can be made by any citizen to government bodies.
Rafael Zanatta, lawyer and research director at the Data Privacy Brasil Association, remembers, however, that the law was created to “to protect citizens from abuses by the State, and not to protect political representatives or those who hold positions and functions in the public interest”.
Can confidentiality be revoked?
Confidentiality classifications or restrictions on access to information can be reviewed by a new president, comment Zanatta and Renato Toledo, lawyer and doctoral student in State Law at the University of São Paulo (USP).
ADVERTISING
To this end, if elected, the PT leader would need to “review some understandings, such as whether medical information about a president (or civil servants in general in leadership positions) is public or not”, explains Luiz Fernando Toledo, co-founder of Ficam Sabendo and researcher at the Brown Institute, Columbia University.
With a decree change could happen. But the new president could prepare a new bill that would reform the LAI, to modify loopholes, such as not describing a period of less than one hundred years for the application of confidentiality to personal information.
Source: AFP
