In accordance with applicable law and regulations, the Historical Archives allows Hungarian citizens to exercise their right to informational self-determination and gain access to all data pertaining to their person that were produced and managed by former state security bodies.
The Historical Archives prepares documents pertaining to individual Hungarian citizens at their request, which may be submitted by post in the form of a written letter or a request form available at their website, by email or online, or at the Customer Service of the Archives in person. The services of the archive will also be made available through the Hungarian Single Digital Gateway without personal appearance from 1st January 2022.

All registered requests are handled confidentially in accordance with Act CXII of 2011 on the Right Informational Self-Determination, and no information of these requests is disclosed to third parties.
Based on the information provided in the request, the employees of the Historical Archive conduct a document search using available indexed and archival tools. During preparation, documents are photocopied and in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, these copies are anonymized if necessary to obscure unauthorized information.
In accordance with applicable law, certain types of data may only be viewed by certain categories of persons, including persons under surveillance of whom the date was gathered by former state security bodies, network persons, operative contacts, officials and so-called third parties who are mentioned in the documents but belong to neither of the former categories.
Information amendment is primarily provided for victims, i.e., persons formerly under surveillance by former Hungarian state security bodies, but in the case of deceased persons, their relatives as determined by law may also view the documents pertaining to the person in question. In these regards, parents, children and sibling are entitled to the same information amendment rights as the deceased person.
In the case of a deceased partner, the widow(er) may only view documents produced during the duration of their marriage and only if they and their partner were still married at the time of the partner’s death.
In accordance with applicable law, persons formerly under surveillance are entitled to the identification of network persons, operative contacts or officials that are mentioned in documents pertaining to the person in question. However, network persons will only be identified by the Archives at the express request of the person entitled to this information, and if such individuals can be unambiguously identified, the person submitting the request will be provided the personal information of the network person observed and reported on them.
If the person requesting access to the information is a former network person or official, then such persons shall only be provided with information specifically pertaining to them and shall not be entitled to see documents they have prepared for former state security bodies.
After the documents are prepared, the employees of the Historical Archives will inform the person in question how the produced copies of their documents may be obtained. The copies may be received in person at the Customer Service in the Archives or may be sent via post at request. with the exception of copied network documents, copies. As a new service, following log-in, customers can also receive documents online through the Hungarian Single Digital Gateway.
In accordance with the provisions of Act III of 2003 on the cost of photocopying documents, the first series of copies of documents pertaining to a person are free of charge, and persons requesting postal delivery of their copies are only required to pay for postage.

The documents are continuously processed both traditionally and digitally by the employee of the Historical Archives, which results in the accumulation of new available information over time. Accordingly, data from previous requests is periodically checked against the database of processed documents so that newly discovered documents may be copied and sent to the persons in question.