{"id":36977,"date":"2022-11-29T17:34:20","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T00:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/n-m-supreme-court-justice-cites-security-concerns-in-pushing-exemption-to-public-records-law\/"},"modified":"2022-11-30T00:34:20","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T00:34:20","slug":"n-m-supreme-court-justice-cites-security-concerns-in-pushing-exemption-to-public-records-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/n-m-supreme-court-justice-cites-security-concerns-in-pushing-exemption-to-public-records-law\/","title":{"rendered":"N.M. Supreme Court justice cites security concerns in pushing exemption to public records law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\u201cWe
\u201cWe also have noted recently an uptick in people trying to kind of suss out what the security system is at the New Mexico Supreme Court,\u201d the chief justice of the New Mexico Supreme Court said. (Austin Fisher \/ Source NM)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A panel of lawmakers that weighs New Mexico\u2019s court system between legislative sessions chose not to endorse a proposal to weaken the state\u2019s sunshine law in order to protect judges from violence.<\/p>\n

But the lawmaker who objected to the bill suggested that work could still be done to convince transparency advocates that it would be a good change.<\/p>\n

New Mexico Supreme Court Chief Justice Shannon Bacon presented draft legislation to the Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee on Tuesday on behalf of the Administrative Office of the Courts.<\/p>\n

One of the bills she presented would add a seventh exemption to one of the state\u2019s two main sunshine laws, the Inspection of Public Records Act.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think security systems, planning, schematics, for any state building, any government building, should be protected from IPRA requests,\u201d she told the committee.<\/p>\n

The draft of the bill presented to the committee would prohibit the public from seeing records \u201cfrom the security system of a facility of the state or a political subdivision of the state\u201d that could \u201cexpose vulnerabilities in security systems\u201d to attack a government building.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolitical subdivisions\u201d include things like city and county governments and state agencies.<\/p>\n

The bill lists the following as falling under that category of security system records:<\/p>\n

Security camera video footage or images.Control system records and information.Alarm system records and information.Security system technical specifications.Security system operation records.Security system placement information.<\/div>\n

\u201cWe receive IPRA requests that are not nefarious necessarily but that will say, \u2018Please give us the camera footage from X events in court,\u2019\u201d Bacon said. \u201cWe also have noted recently an uptick in people trying to kind of suss out what the security system is at the New Mexico Supreme Court, including a gentleman walking around our building, taking pictures of all of our cameras with an iPad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Local journalists routinely use security camera footage in their reporting, either from public buildings or obtained by police from private ones. In one case, a local newspaper in 2019 used security camera footage to substantiate allegations of theft by a city manager. (Disclosure: Austin Fisher edited that series of stories.)<\/p>\n

Committee Chair Sen. Joseph Cervantes (D-Las Cruces) objected to the bill because the language as written is too broad.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to lodge an objection, with all due respect, but simply not because of the concept. I liked the concept,\u201d Cervantes said. \u201cBut I think we should probably spend some time defining clearly what we want to exempt from IPRA when we talk about security systems, because I think the way I read the bill, it\u2019s essentially all records related to security systems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cervantes said he is concerned about shielding from public view documents related to procurement, the process the New Mexico government must go through to fairly and transparently buy goods and services from private companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know you wouldn\u2019t intend to do that, but I think this would exempt that,\u201d Cervantes said. \u201cWe want to make sure that when people are bidding contracts, and buying the equipment and doing those kinds of things, that those records are not exempted from IPRA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cervantes also said the measure\u2019s sponsors should work hard to \u201cbring in the predictable opposition\u201d who have historically opposed the Legislature\u2019s efforts to add more exemptions to IPRA, including the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government and the Albuquerque Journal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent a lot of time thinking about whether to bring this bill or not, because we know that touching IPRA has always felt like the third rail,\u201d Bacon said with a laugh. \u201cBut we really believe that there needs to be one modification\u201d to IPRA.<\/p>\n

Cervantes suggested they work with those transparency advocates and persuade them that \u201cjudges are at risk, judges are being assassinated, their families are being killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are already six exemptions prohibiting the public from seeing various kinds of records written into IPRA.<\/p>\n

One of those carveouts has very similar language to the draft legislation, and already allows the government to withhold its \u201ctactical response plans or procedures\u201d that \u201ccould reveal specific vulnerabilities, risk assessments or tactical emergency security procedures that could be used to facilitate the planning or execution of a terrorist attack.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lawmaker anticipates \u2018predictable opposition\u2019 against proposal to weaken state\u2019s sunshine law<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36978,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[138],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-36977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-new-mexico"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36977"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=36977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}