Brazil
Lei de Acesso à Informação
Lei nº 12.527/2011
Brazil's access law, filed through the federal Fala.BR platform. Classification is time-boxed by grade — ultrassecreto 25 years, secreto 15, reservado 5 — which is why the classic Air Force UFO files are already open.
The clock
20 calendar days
Immediate access where possible; otherwise 20 days, extendable by 10 with express justification.
The Air Force's historic UFO files — Operação Prato included — were transferred to the Arquivo Nacional from 2010 onward and most are already open.
Reading the statute itself
The text of this one is not reproduced here: foreign legislation is published under its own country’s copyright rules, so it is linked instead. Everything on this page — the deadline, the appeal path, the fee standard — is Aletheca’s summary of that text, and the official source is one click away.
If they refuse
- Appeal deadline
- 10 days — days from the decision, up the administrative hierarchy
- Appeal route
- Recurso to the authority's superior within 10 days, then the CGU, then the CMRI as the final administrative instance.
- Litigation
- The courts, after the administrative chain; the CGU stage resolves most disputes.
Fees and expedition
Fee-waiver standard
Free apart from reproduction costs.
Aletheca argues this on every request it files here. A service that publishes every page it receives, free, to a public archive has an unusually strong showing — considerably stronger than a private requester’s.
Exemptions it allows
- Art. 23 Segurança nacional (time-boxed by grade)
- Art. 31 Informação pessoal