Year after year, the use of online surveillance technologies and the massive collection of personal data by different public security institutions in Brazil grows. The current practice is the proliferation of non-standardized and very diverse public contracts in each state – and sometimes even within each state.

The public authorities also maintain a low level of transparency about the use and hiring of these tools. There is a lack of information about what data on Brazilian citizens is being collected, processed and used to enable these technologies to work.

The scenario is made even more worrying by the weakness of the regulatory framework for the protection of personal data in the field of public security. The processing of data collected for the purpose of investigating and prosecuting crimes must be regulated by specific legislation, in accordance with Article 4, III of the General Law on the Protection of Personal Data (LGPD), which has not yet advanced in the country. Even so, the LGPD must be applied until this specific text is approved.

Transparência Brasil’s Surveillance and Technology project seeks to understand:

• How has the government contracted online surveillance technology and the massive collection of personal data for public security today, in the absence of specific data protection regulations for its activities?
• Are there adequate and effectively functioning data protection mechanisms for the information collected, stored and used for these purposes?

The study analyzed five states that use technology intensively in public security: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Paraná and Mato Grosso do Sul.

The material is used to present recommendations to public bodies for improvements in transparency and the protection of personal data in the use of online and telematic monitoring technologies. The second objective of the initiative is to qualify discussions on the drafting of a Data Protection Law in the context of criminal prosecution, as determined by §1 of art. 4 of the LGPD.