Secret government camera surveillance approved by appellate court

I've been meaning to blog about the outcome of the Texas Observer's lawsuit over access to surveillance camera footage, but it's somehow just seemed too depressing. (See Dave Mann's "For their eyes only: After 5 years and $240,000, DPS keeps Capitol video hidden," June 17.)

The language that allowed concealing surveillance video from the taxpayers who paid for it was enacted in the 2003 session - Texas' first after 9/11 -  in what I considered the biggest "loss" among all the homeland security legislation that passed that year. DPS and the University of Texas were the two entities pushing for the change. A compromise bill had come out of the House with language that would not have concealed security camera information, but state Sen. Jeff Wentworth tacked on an amendment in the Senate that made secret information that “relates to the specifications, operating procedures or location of a security system,” terminology that came directly from an open records request UT-Austin was fighting from The Daily Texan.  That's the wording the Third Court of Appeals now says allows surveillance video to be withheld.

Looking back in my files, I found this 2-page flyer (pdf) that was distributed at the end of the legislative process asking (unsuccessfully) Texas House members to refuse concurrence with the Senate amendments because of the addition of this language. It makes the case why the change was a bad idea better than I could replicate on the fly nearly a decade hence. The ruling against the Observer confirms my worst fears about that language - that however innocuous it sounded, it would be interpreted sweepingly, which is exactly what happened.