Don’t try to videotape anything at the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Senate, especially if the video is about “open records” available only at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC.
We recently asked Nancy Erickson, Secretary of the Senate, for permission to visit her office and create such a video:
We anticipate visiting your office for about two hours. During the first hour we will familiarize ourselves with the public access computers there. During the second hour, with your permission, we would videotape short sequences about the information that can be retrieved on those computers. We would like permission to videotape the screen on one of those computer terminals to help educate investigative journalists on how to use your system.
If possible, we would like permission to videotape one of your staff member’s responses to questions that we may have at that time.
In her reply (see below), we are disappointed that there is a longstanding policy that prohibits such filming. When we visit Hart Senate Office building in the near future, we’ll write about what records we can see there, especially ones that are not available anywhere else.
Both the Senate and House exempt themselves from Freedom of Information Act requests and create their own rules about access to information.
Some documents are only available at the Secretary of the Senate and a state’s Secretary of State office. For an example, see Candidate Charles Schollenberger files U.S. Senate Financial Disclosure Report.
We’re still waiting for a reply from the Clerk of the House on a similar request to create a video in that office.
[...] Some U.S. Senate “open records” can only be seen in DC, watchdog.org, Dec. 16, 2009. [...]