Brazil Supreme Court justice accuses federal police of institutional spying and invokes Orwell’s 1984

Justice André Mendonça compared alleged surveillance by Brazil’s Federal Police intelligence service to George Orwell’s 1984 when explaining his decision to suspend the force’s director-general and intelligence chief.

Mendonça’s ruling says the Federal Police intelligence division conducted “systematic monitoring” and “targeted collection” on the Supreme Court justice handling the Master case and on Attorney General Jorge Messias for more than 30 days. He described the activity as institutional spying.

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systematic monitoring

“Therefore, an examination of the court’s case law shows its absolute intolerance toward the production and dissemination of this type of operation, which could constitute genuine institutional spying against any Brazilian citizen, including public servants generally,” Mendonça wrote.

“Given the situation presented here, which more closely resembles the setting conceived by George Orwell in his celebrated dystopian work 1984, it is abundantly clear that the facts are extremely serious,” he added.

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targeted collection

Mendonça also attacked the Federal Police documents in the case as “surreal,” “absurd conjecture,” a “legal nothing” and amorphous. He said the document’s technical weakness was obvious and that professional organisations with expertise in the field had publicly identified numerous flaws.

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genuine institutional spying

The dispute intensified after Alexandre de Moraes released parts of a Federal Police intelligence report. The document said Mendonça showed interest in opening a formal investigation into Banco Master and the INSS scandal. Moraes used the report, which described itself as having no evidentiary value, to accuse Mendonça of misconduct including a crime of responsibility, administrative improbity and abuse of authority.

The report had no official Federal Police letterhead or signature. It cited anonymous accounts alleging that Mendonça had improperly tried to interfere with plea-bargaining agreements in the INSS case and claimed, without identifying its source, that he did not trust the Federal Police director-general or Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet.

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Given the situation presented here, which more closely resembles the setting conceived by George Orwell in his celebrated dystopian work 1984, it is abundantly clear that the facts are extremely serious.