O público e o privado: acesso à informação pessoal para a recuperação de fatos históricos de maior relevância

Abstract

The present paper presents a study on the mechanism of access to documents that contains personal information that aims to recover historical facts of greater relevance in Brazil. The restriction of public access to documents with personal information is a fundamental value of contemporary democracies, a rule. In general, a few exceptions are allowed. The text presents a history and analysis on the processing of bill 219/2003 in the Brazilian National Congress that originated the law of access to information, Law 12,527 / 2011. The objective is to demonstrate, through legislation, the novelty of this mechanism of access to documents that contains personal information that aims to recover historical facts of greater relevance and the process of its construction that culminated with the law of access to information. It is also performed an analysis of the notices of recognition of documentary sets containing personal information as necessary for the recovery of historical facts of greater relevance already published by the National Archives and some state archives in Brazil. The research demonstrates that the availability of documents containing personal information under the justification of recovery of relevant historical facts have occurred in the Brazilian archives under the legal protection, despite the controversy surrounding such procedure. Such controversy is based on the difficulty of the right balance between the right of access to information and the right to privacy.