Government 3 has the opportunity-and the instruments-to correct one of the greatest recent misunderstandings about (LAI): the so-called “100-year confidentiality.” And it can do so without risking being remembered as the government that opened a breach for the weakening of the country’s main transparency law.
First of all, it is necessary to clarify: “100 -year secrecy” does not exist. We have tried to explain the impropriety of the term, but the expression caught. And even us, in this column, we make our mea-mulp here. Even though always in quotes, we ended up using her to dialogue with the vocabulary that became popular. The problem is that the term hinders public debate and creates noise where there is an objective and soluctable impasse: the lack of clear criteria for the use of the justification for personal data protection as an argument for denying access to public information. Precisely with the objective of preventing this confusion from perpetuating, we publish this week, with other organizations, one about how to talk more properly on this topic.
The LAI foresees only three: reserved (five years), secret (15 years) and ultrascreto (25 years). And yet: these are not mere negative information requests, but formal processes of confidential classification with clear and legally delimited procedures.
What is conventionally called “100 -year confidentiality” are, in fact, access restrictions based on the interpretation that a particular information is personal. In some cases, this justification is legitimate. In others, clearly. The basis for this is in Article 31 of the LAI, a device that, in turn, does not advocate a period of a century as automatic but as “maximum term”. That is, it is “until” and not “for 100 years”.
Therefore, it is not necessary to change the text of the law. One update is enough, through a presidential decree, clearly indicating which intermediate temporal limits should be followed in this spectrum. And align the limitations of object from the jurisprudence already enshrined by the Federal Supreme Court () and Federal Court of Auditors ().
In an interview with the column, political scientist Dalson Figueiredo, a professor at the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE) and researcher at Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences, said it would be reckless for the government to open LAI for discussion in Congress at this time. In the expert’s assessment, “small writing changes – made in plenary commissions or amendments – may substantially change the scope and effectiveness of the law. As the proverb says, the devil is in the details.”
The question is also precedent. Since its sanction in 2011, LAI has never been changed by Congress. Once this path is open, it will be difficult to prevent future governments – with less republican intentions – do the same.
Figueiredo also points out that the national and international political conjuncture in 2011, when LAI was approved, was another. “Today the scenario is of high risk of weakening the legislation. The government should not pay to see.”
The Lula 3 government has made important advances in public transparency, such as the creation of the bidding panel, the reformulation of the correction panel and the publication of dozens of excellent statements to improve the application of LAI. The creation of the DIRBI – declaration of incentives, waivers, benefits and tax immunities – is a milestone in the control of tax spending by CNPJ and responds to a historical demand from civil society.
It is not necessary to embrace now the risk of being remembered by setbacks in one of the most powerful democratic tools since the federal of 1988. There are safer paths – and more effective – within the reach of the executive.
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