Brazil’s freedom of information law has seen significant changes with a new decree signed by interim president Hamilton Mourão while incumbent Jair Bolsonaro takes part in the World Economic Forum in Davos.
The decree published today (24) allows ministers and executive secretaries of the various government departments to transfer classification responsibility for documents containing privileged information to lower-ranking public servants.
Government staff below ministers and executive secretaries, as well as heads of organizations such as foundations and publicly-held companies, will now be able to assign the ultra-secret level (the highest in the current classification) to documents for a 25-year period, which can be extended for the same amount of time.
Slightly less senior public servants will also be able to classify documents as secret, which remain so for 15 years. About 1,300 government staff will now be able to assign top secrecy levels to classified documents.