{"id":5501,"date":"2016-05-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.conectas.org.inf.br\/wp\/noticias\/freedom-of-information-opaque-powers\/"},"modified":"2021-04-20T18:44:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T18:44:04","slug":"freedom-of-information-opaque-powers","status":"publish","type":"noticia","link":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/freedom-of-information-opaque-powers\/","title":"Freedom of information :: Opaque powers","content":"

To commemorate the fourth anniversary of Brazil\u2019s Freedom of Information Law, a public seminar entitled \u201cPaths to transparency: challenges and good practices in the implementation of the FOI law<\/u>\u201d<\/a> was held on Thursday, May 12, in S\u00e3o Paulo. The event was attended by experts to discuss compliance with the law by the Judiciary and by the S\u00e3o Paulo State Public Security Department.\u00a0It was organized by Conectas, Abraji (Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism)<\/u><\/a>,\u00a0Article 19<\/u><\/a> and Transparency Brazil<\/a>.<\/u><\/p>\n

\"\"Kicking off the first panel of the event, a new report<\/u><\/a> on the application of the FOI law in the country\u2019s state courts was presented by Article 19.\u00a0According to the executive director of the organization, Paula Martins, the Judiciary is the least transparent branch of the Brazilian government, both on the administrative and judicial level.\u00a0\u201cThere is an overall lack of information on public participation, agendas and hearings,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The report reveals that none of the country\u2019s 27 state courts comply with the minimum criteria for active transparency required by the Freedom of Information Law. According to Martins, one of the most serious aspects identified by the study is the high number of unanswered information requests, which represent 56.8% of the total. She also pointed out that only 29% of responses are considered satisfactory.<\/p>\n

Also present on the first panel was Andr\u00e9 Augusto Salvador Bezerra, president of the Executive Board of AJD (Association of Judges for Democracy)<\/u><\/a>, who discussed how the ideological policing of judges causes the Judiciary to be even less transparent. He said that many auxiliary judges occupy \u201cstrategic positions\u201d in the courts and that the lack of criteria for appointing judges means they can be pressured by the president of the S\u00e3o Paulo State Court and by the governor. \u201cAfter all, it\u2019s the governor who has the last say on the budget of the Judiciary,\u201d he said.\u00a0Bezerra went on to claim that \u201cthere is no transparency whatsoever in the Judiciary, and when there is no transparency, there is no control. This, in theory, permits the ideological policing of the judges and, therefore, strips the courts of their democratic legitimacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the seminar\u2019s second panel, Rafael Cust\u00f3dio, coordinator of the Justice program at Conectas, and Guilherme Siqueira de Carvalho, of the S\u00e3o Paulo State Ombudsman\u2019s Office, debated good practices and the limits of secrecy in public security.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>While mentioning the steps taken by the S\u00e3o Paulo state government to reclassify civil and military police documents as secret, Cust\u00f3dio stressed the importance of the FOI law for the public interest. \u201cIt has been discovered, for example, that 973 deaths caused by off-duty police officers were excluded from the statistics. It\u2019s alarming,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Cust\u00f3dio explained that \u201cthe exceptions recognized by the law fit like a glove for the institutions that consider that the nature of their work requires secrecy\u201d, citing as an example the failed attempt by civil society to gain access to the standard operating procedures of the S\u00e3o Paulo Military Police for street protests. \u201cIf it\u2019s true that the culture of opaqueness pervades our institutions, with regard to public security institutions the FOI law benefits them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

According to Carvalho, there are circumstances when secrecy needs to be maintained to guarantee state action, but \u201cto resolve this apparent contradiction, it is necessary to proceduralize the document classification process, since secrecy should not be viewed as being inherent to information\u201d. He also said that \u201cthere is no area of the State\u2019s activity more worthy of control than public security\u201d.<\/p>\n

Besides the debate panels, the seminar was also attended by representatives of Abraji and Transparency Brazil, who announced the development of a new collaborative platform for hosting FOI requests and responses. According to the two organizations, on the new site that will be launched before the end of the year \u201cit will be possible to identify the problems with the law and enable the responses to each FOI request to be used by more people\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>

<\/div>","excerpt":"

In a debate on the fourth year of the FOI law, experts criticize the lack of transparency in the Judiciary and in public security<\/p>\n","author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[7],"tags":[68,207],"tema":[12278],"class_list":["post-5501","noticia","type-noticia","status-publish","hentry","category-news","tag-freedom-of-information-law","tag-transparency","tema-democracy-and-human-rights-movement"],"acf":{"author":false,"subtitle-pt":"In a debate on the fourth year of the FOI law, experts criticize the lack of transparency in the Judiciary and in public security"},"yoast":{"focuskw":"","title":"","metadesc":"","linkdex":"","metakeywords":"","meta-robots-noindex":"","meta-robots-nofollow":"","meta-robots-adv":"","canonical":"","redirect":"","opengraph-title":"","opengraph-description":"","opengraph-image":"","twitter-title":"","twitter-description":"","twitter-image":""},"featured_image":[],"terms":{"acoes_categorias":[],"acoes_tags":[],"category":[{"term_id":7,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":1550,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/category\/news\/","relative_link":"category\/news\/","langs":{"en":"news","br":"noticia-conectas"}}],"post_tag":[{"term_id":68,"name":"Freedom of information law","slug":"freedom-of-information-law","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":68,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":13,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/tag\/freedom-of-information-law\/","relative_link":"tag\/freedom-of-information-law\/","langs":{"en":"freedom-of-information-law","br":"lei-de-acesso-a-informacao"}},{"term_id":207,"name":"transparency","slug":"transparency","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":207,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":17,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/tag\/transparency\/","relative_link":"tag\/transparency\/","langs":{"en":"transparency","br":null}}]},"author_name":"Leonardo Medeiros","author_nicename":"leonardo-medeiros","protected":false,"langs":{"en":"freedom-of-information-opaque-powers","br":"acesso-a-informacao-poderes-opacos"},"permalink":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/freedom-of-information-opaque-powers\/","relative_url":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/noticias\/freedom-of-information-opaque-powers\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias\/5501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/noticias"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/noticia"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5501"},{"taxonomy":"tema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/conectas.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tema?post=5501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}