-4592. The Court observes that in a democratic society, it is essential that the State authorities are governed by the principle of maximum disclosure, which establishes the presumption that all information is accessible, subject to a limited system of exceptions. 93. It corresponds to the State to show that it has complied with the above requirements when establishing restrictions to the access to the information it holds. 94. In the instant case, it has been proved that the restriction applied to the access to information was not based on a law. At the time, there was no legislation in Chile that regulated the issue of restrictions to access to State-held information. 95. Furthermore, the State did not prove that the restriction responded to a purpose allowed by the American Convention, or that it was necessary in a democratic society, because the authority responsible for responding to the request for information did not adopt a justified decision in writing, communicating the reasons for restricting access to this information in the specific case. 96. Even though, when restricting the right, the public authority from which information was requested did not adopt a decision justifying the refusal, the Court notes that, subsequently, during the international proceedings, the State offered several arguments to justify the failure to provide the information requested in sections 3, 6 and 7 of the request of May 7, 1998 (supra para. 57(13)). 97. Moreover, it was only during the public hearing held on April 3, 2006 (supra para. 32), that the Vice President of the Foreign Investment Committee at the time of the facts, who appeared as a witness before the Court, explained the reasons why he did not provide the requested information on the three sections (supra para. 57(20)). Essentially he stated that “the Foreign Investment Committee […] did not provide the company’s financial information because disclosing this information was against the collective interest,” which was “the country’s development,” and that it was the Investment Committee’s practice not to provide financial information on the company that could affect its competitiveness to third parties. He also stated that the Committee did not have some of the information, and that it was not obliged to have it or to acquire it. 98. As has been proved, the restriction applied in this case did not comply with the parameters of the Convention. In this regard, the Court understands that the establishment of restrictions to the right of access to State-held information by the practice of its authorities, without respecting the provisions of the Convention (supra paras. 77 and 88 to 93), creates fertile ground for discretionary and arbitrary conduct by the State in classifying information as secret, reserved or confidential, and gives rise to legal uncertainty concerning the exercise of this right and the State’s powers to limit it. 99. It should also be stressed that when requesting information from the Foreign Investment Committee, Marcel Claude Reyes “proposed to assess the commercial, economic and social elements of the [Río Cóndor] project, measure its impact on the environment […] and set in motion social control of the conduct of the State bodies that intervene or intervened” in the development of the “Río Cóndor exploitation” project (supra para. 57(13)). Also, Arturo Longton Guerrero stated that he went to request information “concerned about the possible indiscriminate felling of indigenous forests in the extreme south of Chile” and that “[t]he refusal of public information hindered [his] monitoring task” (supra para. 48). The possibility of Messrs. Claude Reyes and Longton Guerrero carrying out social control of public administration was harmed by not receiving