Itamaraty creates a rule that allows eternal confidentiality of documents that were previously public

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mauro Vieira, signed on November 5th an ordinance that expands the list of data that can be classified by the ministry as confidential, when possibilities of “serious damage, tangible or intangible, to society and the State” are identified by diplomats. Under the new rule, requests made via the Access to Information Law (LAI) for documents that were not previously classified as confidential, as required by law, may also be denied.

The measure was challenged by associations and parliamentarians, who pointed out a lack of specificity in the data that could be denied and violations of the LAI. According to specialist in Access to Information Law Bruno Morassutti, advocacy director at the NGO Ficam Sabendo, article 29 of the ordinance institutionalizes eternal secrecy by prohibiting access for an indefinite period of time to documents “regardless of classification”.

When contacted, Itamaraty stated that it is “one of the bodies with the greatest production of confidential information, due to the sensitivity of diplomatic activity”, and that “the ordinance does not create new hypotheses of secrecy”. (Read the full note below.)

Article 29 also states that the international obligations of the Brazilian State, in particular that of ensuring the full performance of the diplomatic and consular functions of foreign governments and international organizations, constitute grounds for the application of restrictions on access to information, even without prior secrecy classification.

“The Law (on Access to Information) establishes deadlines. Every time the government classifies information, it is restricted for a period of time. When the government doesn’t classify it, firstly, you can’t even know that this information exists. It becomes a black box, because you don’t even know how many documents will be classified in this way”, assessed the lawyer.

Morassutti mentions, for example, that Itamaraty could deny access to diplomatic cables that detail activities from its diplomatic posts abroad when it believes that the disclosure of these documents could put the Brazilian State at risk, regardless of prior classification.

For the executive director of Transparência Brasil, Juliana Sakai, “the ordinance represents a serious risk of lack of control in the application of secrecy”. She argues that, although currently restricted to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “unclassified secrecy can spread by virtue of mere ordinances throughout the public administration”. Sakai cites as a parallel to the ordinance the Jair Bolsonaro government’s attempt to expand the list of employees responsible for enforcing secrecy to federal government documents.

“This is illegal, as there is nothing provided for in the LAI in this regard or in any other national law. Acts of secrecy classification are regulated through legally defined authorities, protocols and deadlines that can be monitored by civil society, as the list of classified documents is published annually”, he stated.

In a joint note, the National History Association (ANPUH) and the Brazilian Association of International Relations (ABRI) stated that the ordinance “establishes safeguards and secrecy criteria that go beyond the limits set out in law, reversing the principle according to which publicity is the rule and secrecy the exception”.

“By allowing the denial of access requests based on imprecise expressions – such as the possibility of ‘tangible or intangible damage’ to the State – and by creating restrictions even for unclassified documents, the text leaves room for discretionary interpretations and weakens the public transparency policy,” they stated.

The associations also pointed out that Itamaraty has gradually restricted access to its historical collection under “administrative justifications and the misuse of arguments relating to the protection of personal data”.

Among the changes introduced by the ordinance, there is, for example, the classification as “unreasonable” of requests for access to information that could put the activities of the Brazilian government at risk or cause “serious damage”.

The ministry defined that the unreasonableness of the requests will be characterized when “it is established that the disclosure of the requested information has the potential to bring harm to the public interest greater than the benefits of its disclosure”, which included potential “concrete risks to the country, public order, public security, the national economy, territorial integrity or the country’s diplomatic relations”.

However, it will be up to the ministry itself to define which information does or does not pose a risk to Brazilian society.

Another change promoted by Itamaraty is to authorize the rejection of requests for information “the disclosure of which could create embarrassment or obstacles to the performance of the functions of foreign diplomatic and consular missions in Brazil”.

This device can prevent, for example, any information about a certain activity from another country in Brazil from being accessed, under the pretext that it could create embarrassment in the relationship between the two States.

The Novo party bench in the Chamber filed a Legislative Decree Project (PDL) to revoke the ordinance. They assess that the Ministry’s measure abusively expands the confidentiality of Itamaraty documents.

When justifying the PDL, parliamentarians argued that the text represents a “serious setback in the transparency policy, by arbitrarily expanding the hypotheses of secrecy and creating unprecedented and subjective barriers to access to public information”.

“When Itamaraty resorts to secrecy to hide information from the population, this is not caution – it is a clear attempt to keep the country in the dark. And the government that does this shows that it is more concerned with shielding itself than governing with transparency”, he told the Estadão deputy Adriana Ventura (Novo-SP).

Read the full note from Itamaraty

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MRE) is one of the bodies with the greatest production of confidential information, due to the sensitivity of diplomatic activity and international relations. Seeking to fill an internal regulatory gap, the MRE published Ordinance No. 631, of 11/5/2025, in order to establish standards for the treatment and access to information in the body, in line with the Federal Constitution (art. 5, item XXXIII), the Access to Information Law (LAI) (Law 12,527/2012) and its regulatory decree. The Ordinance reserves a specific section to regulate access in typical situations of diplomatic and consular activity, in compliance with the Vienna Conventions on Diplomatic Relations and Consular Relations and other international provisions.

The Ordinance does not create new possibilities for secrecy. Its restriction hypotheses were defined to prevent indiscriminate use and guarantee the right of access to information. The document reinforces that any application of safeguards must be well-founded, legally based and subject to reassessment. Its central objective was to consolidate a single, legal and cohesive instrument that provides clarity and legal certainty to public agents regarding their duties, under the principle of access as a rule and restriction as an exception. It is expected that the document will help prevent excessive or unduly defensive postures that public agents could adopt in the scenario of a legal gap within the scope of the MRE.