50-Year data protection of police records unconstitutional, says professor

Information from police reports filed by police in São Paulo state has been placed under access restrictions for a period of 50 years. Earlier this month, the state's Public Security Secretariat (SSP) published a resolution classifying sensitive and personal records and information, which can be subject to protection for up to 100 years under federal law.

Restricting the access to reports can be detrimental to studies on violence and even for contrasting statistical data on crimes disclosed by the SSP. Pedro Esteban Serrano, a constitutional law professor at the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), mentions other implications:

“What I think really is behind this is an attempt to cover up state violations, because searching police reports is a tool to find out about a range of issues including, for example, police brutality, abuse of official authority, or police use of lethal force,” he said. “They're all information that society should be able to monitor in order to prevent abuse. I think what's really going on is that the law on freedom of information and data protection is being misused for abuse of authority,” he went on.

According to Serrano, long data protection periods should apply only to documents that pose threats to social life, the integrity of society, or national security, which is not the case with police reports. Records relating to a country's strategic interests—a list of secret agents, for example—would be confidential, he says.

“This 50-year restriction on police reports is unconstitutional,” the professor continued. “There's a misuse of authority in law enforcement, with a hidden agenda of impairing societal control of police activity. Such control is a provision of the Constitution,” he went on.

But the SSP contended that information from police reports will only be subject to restrictions where they expose personal information of individual citizens or enable personal identification of witnesses and individuals concerned. In a statement, the secretariat says the new regulations leave “plenty of room for accessing objective information from police reports, with confidentiality restrictions only applying with regard to personal information, as required by law.” Moreover, they pointed out, the SSP's existing guidelines have not changed, and “all information directly concerned with strategic planning of crime enforcement must be protected for the sake of ensuring the security of society.”

In addition, SSP emphasized that information on control, distribution, and use of existing enforcement personnel, as well as on distribution, allocation, and registration of police vehicles, is regarded as sensitive and classified.

Translated by Mayra Borges