By eight votes to two, ministers declare unconstitutional the Federal Police rule of 2021, which limited access to all procedures registered in the corporation’s systems.
With eight votes to two, the Federal Court of Justice act declared unconstitutional by the Federal Police in 2021, within the government Jair Bolsonaroto limit access to all procedures registered in the company’s systems.
The case led the Court to affirm the thesis according to which the restriction of publicity to an act of any of the Powers must be motivated “objectively, concretely and formally”. “Public acts which it imposes, in a general way and without valid and specific reasons, which hinder the fundamental right to information are null and void”.
Seven ministers followed the rapporteur’s vote, Carmen Lucia. “The Republic does not allow catacombs. Democracy does not sympathize with secrets”, said the minister, repeating considerations made when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the production of files on ‘anti-fascist’ citizens.
Ministers Dias Toffoli, Luiz Fux, Edson Fachin, Alexandre de Moraes, Gilmar Mendes, Cristiano Zanin, Luís Roberto Barroso and Rosa Weber followed this agreement. Ministers André Mendonça and Kassio Nunes Marques were defeated.
The dissenting vote in the case was filed by Mendonça, Bolsonaro’s former justice minister, who was appointed to the STF the day after the contested act was published in the action.
Mendonça defended that secrecy can be enforced as a “general rule” in the Federal Police’s Electronic Information System (SEI) for “the transmission of intelligence-related information, the disclosure or unrestricted access to which may compromise investigations or inspections in course”.
The minister argued that the SEI is for internal use and that the constraint “does not prevent access to information by any interested party, when, in the specific case, there is a lack of sensitivity or prejudice to the final activity carried out by the Office Federal Traffic Police’.
The STF analyzed an action in which the PSOL challenged a letter sent in July 2021 by the then chairman of the National Commission for the Electronic Information System of the Federal Police – a body of the Ministry of Justice. The document stipulates that all information and documents on the platform are classified or confidential.
The caption evoked the principles of transparency and publicity, indicating an abuse of purpose in the drafting of the deed. The PSOL believes that the justification for the provision, of ‘compartment of sensitive information and the possibility of incorrect entries’, is ‘laconic and generic for a restriction of a fundamental right’.
In her vote, Cármen Lúcia highlighted that in a Republic the principle of publicity and access to public documents of all powers prevails, “secrecy is a legitimate exception only if duly and sufficiently justified”.
According to the minister, “the exceptional nature of the imposition of secrecy must be objective, formal and specifically motivated”.
He stressed that information referring to the public administration, ‘understood by the institutional action and by the work of state agents, is always of public interest’. “The State places itself at the service of the citizens – and for this alone it is justified – and as such it must satisfy its acts”, said the minister.
Cármen Lúcia rebutted the Justice Ministry’s position that the restriction was possible as long as “the preparatory document status of the files or of the information contained therein persisted”.
“The control of the legitimacy and definitiveness of administrative acts is possible only with transparency in public management. This control is not limited to the completed and accomplished deed, concerning the administrative procedure that precedes it and the reasons identified as decisive for the adoption of a certain conduct by the public administration”, warns the minister.
Source: Terra
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