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Aletheca

Uruguay

Ley de Derecho de Acceso a la Información Pública

Ley N° 18.381 (2008)

Uruguay's access law, with a silence rule that favours the requester: no answer inside the deadline creates a right of access rather than an implied refusal.

The clock

20 business days

20 días hábiles, extendable once by 20 more with reasons.

CRIDOVNI has operated inside the Air Force since 1979 and has periodically opened its case archive to researchers.

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
Not specified
Appeal route
Report to the UAIP (Unidad de Acceso a la Información Pública), or an acción de acceso before the courts, which must be decided in days.
Litigation
Acción de acceso a la información — a summary judicial action with a statutory turnaround.

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. 9 Información reservada (incl. seguridad pública y defensa nacional)
  • Art. 10 Información confidencial

Quirks worth knowing

Silence past the deadline is deemed release, not refusal — the inverse of France and Spain.