PUBLIC INFORMATION, SECRECY, AND DEMOCRACY: AN INFO-STEGANOGRAPHIC PROJECT

UM PROJETO INFO-ESTEGANOGRÁFICO

Abstract

Secrecy surrounding public information in Brazil constitutes a power mechanism that, designed as a state policy, historically tensions social dynamics under different political regimes. Particularly within democratic frameworks, it figures as a powerful tensor of the Brazilian public information access regime, revealing an antinomic condition: the same national legal order that safeguards the right to information legitimizes the institutional design of opacity. Faced with this paradox, this study seeks to understand how Brazilian democracy accommodates the institutionalization of secrecy as a legitimate exception to the right to information. Methodologically, a qualitative approach is adopted, supported by bibliographic and documentary research. As a theoretical framework, the dimensions of government, governance, and governmentality proposed by Sandra Braman in the field of information policy are mobilized, considering both the historical process and the contemporary manifestations of secrecy in Brazil. The central argument contends that the intertwining of these three dimensions articulates the functioning of secrecy as a state info-steganographic project that instrumentalizes public information as an anti-knowledge asset with a markedly antidemocratic bias, thereby deepening power asymmetries in the State-society relationship. The analysis demonstrates that the manifestation of secrecy weakens the availability, visibility, intelligibility, and integrity of information, producing silencings and inequalities that embargo public information and collide with democratic ideals, pointing to the strengthening of social control as an essential vector for ensuring the right to information in its fullness within Brazilian democracy.