Grits' recommendations for improving legislative websites

I mentioned that your correspondent testified the other day to the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee on electronic privacy issues. At the same hearing,  the committee took testimony from staff only on another interim charge, "Study the online legislative resources available to the public from Texas Senate Committee websites and compare resources to those provided by other state legislative committees in Texas and other states. Determine how Texas Senate websites can be improved to provide a more interactive and transparent government."

Texas' legislative websites are better than most. But as the committee discussed the topic, a few recommendations came to mind that weren't mentioned in the invited testimony. Here are Grits' two cents, as somebody who uses legislative websites quite a lot:

Place the contents of the committees' backup notebooks online. Before every committee hearing, members are typically given a paper packet of material by committee staff that includes written testimony, background information, potential amendment language, and other materials related to the bills they're hearing. But audience members or people viewing online can't see what they're looking at. In nearly all cases, staff receive this information electronically and could post it online or easily scan it into a pdf form. Invariably these are open records that could be obtained with a request, but there's value in being systematically, preemptively transparent on every bill. Doing so would give people a lot more information about public policy debates and more confidence in their representatives' decisions. 

Make meeting minutes (slightly) more detailed, listing not just bills but speakers along with the time each started so it's easier to find their testimony on video. Meetings can often last for hours during session, covering many bills, and it'd be incredibly useful to have the meetings better indexed so people who couldn't attend can easily find the parts they're interested in.

Do not delete old data, video, etc., just because you add new content. Some agencies do this, removing old information when new reports come in or arbitrarily removing old information from their sites beyond a certain date. Storage is cheap and an historical record is not just valuable for government but imperative.

Date set for hearing on interim charges on electronic privacy

As predicted, hearings on the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee's interim charges regarding electronic privacy are back on now that state Sen. Craig Estes has been elevated to chairman. The committee has announced a meeting specifically on those three, related interim charges at the capitol on Sept. 16 at 8 a.m.. They'll be taking public testimony.

My hopes for the hearings are that the committee recommends a) a version of the Estes/Hinojosa/Hughes legislation to require warrants for police to access cell-phone location data, and b) new restrictions on license-plate readers including limits on how long location data can be retained.

Some parts of the interim charges, particularly related to privacy vis a vis commercial vendors, I have less expertise than with law enforcement matters and thus fewer concrete suggestions regarding privacy enhancements. But I did see a related, recent essay - a speech, actually, to the Black Hat hacker conference - that offered several thoughtful suggestions that might inform those discussions.

The Obama Administration has consistently taken the position that neither cloud-based email nor cell-phone location data should require warrants for police to access them. Texas took a huge step last session in the opposite direction, passing the nation's first requirements for police to obtain warrants to access cloud-based email and other content. During the 84th session in 2015, we have the opportunity to similarly exert leadership regarding location data - both in the form of cell-phone metadata and license plate readers. This hearing September 16 represents an opportunity for the Senate to snub the Administrations' pro-snooping positions and contrast the state as a bastion of liberty compared to the Nasty Old Feds. Plus, it's the right thing to do and the public, including the conservative base and the state's thriving tech industry, supports it. What a happy convergence of interests!

Reshuffling chairs benefits cell-phone privacy bill in Texas Senate

If, like me, you're prone to indulging in political tea-leaf reading, here's some potentially good news for Texans who favor keeping their cell-phone location data private!

In 2013, state Sen. Craig Estes (R) of Wichita Falls and Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa (D) of McAllen both filed ultimately unsuccessful legislation to require law enforcement to gain warrants to access cell-phone location data, except in emergencies or at the request of the phone owner. A similar provision by state Rep. Bryan Hughes passed the Texas House as an amendment on a 126-4 vote but was not included in the final bill.

Now, Sen. Estes chairs the Senate State Affairs Committee which has received an interim charge to recommend legislation on a topic he was already championing! That should give cell-phone privacy legislation a significant boost in the 84th session.

The story of the current interim charges on electronic privacy is an object lesson regarding the unpredictable vicissitudes of politics. Interim charges were first requested by the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, but were not assigned by Speaker Joe Straus. One hopes Straus is not blocking the effort to spite the House author, with whom he has feuded in the past on other matters. After all, the bill had 107 joint and co-authors including a majority of reps from both parties! Most of his members want this!

Anyway, those of us hoping for movement on this bill were a bit deflated. Then, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst revived the issue, assigning an excellent set of interim charges on these and related topics to the Senate State Affairs Committee. Suddenly, it looked like the issues would receive a thorough vetting before the 84th Legislative session after all. At least, right up until State Affairs Committee Chair Robert Duncan left his post to become Chancellor of Texas Tech and the Lt. Governor lost his primary and became a lame duck, as did the committee's vice chair, Robert Deuell (a great if under-remarked loss to the body on many levels). With the committee leaderless, a State Affairs staffer told me as recently as last month that they likely wouldn't hold hearings and would somehow generate a committee report without them.

Texas Senate State Affairs Chairman Craig Estes

Then, the Lt. Governor recently named state Sen. Craig Estes as the new chair of the State Affairs committee, a development I missed while vacationing in Mexico. As one of two Senate authors of legislation to require warrants in most cases for police to access cell-phone location data (Chuy Hinojosa was the other one), one would expect him to confront those aspects of the committee's interim charges with more than just a passing interest. These interim charges just got a LOT more interesting.

The House was already primed to pass the Hughes/Estes/Hinojosa legislation and this development sets the bill up to have a much better chance in the Senate in 2015.

Of course, there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. If Dan Patrick comes in as Lt. Governor and replaces Estes as State Affairs chair, that could reverse what currently looks like home-field advantage for the bill in that particular committee, depending on the replacement. And who knows where Greg Abbott will come down on the topic? Time will tell. But the odds of a cell-phone privacy bill's passage next year improved tremendously with Craig Estes' ascension to chairman of State Affairs, no question about it.