The Video Ban Rationale

For consideration:

"The laws and customs that anchor open government...are most at risk when insecure times such as these breed the illusion that if only information and ideas could be rationed to the few and withheld from the many, then our people would be made stronger by their ignorance, more alert by their blinkered vision, more united by their isolation."
Editorial, Editor & Publisher, 2003

As a follow-up to this article posted December 24, 2005, the Mayor of Vienna changed her tune on January 9, 2006 and now says that there was NO record of video tape intimidating citizens. Once again, why the proposed ban of taping meetings?

Additional thought provoking quotations:

"It is important to be mindful of the fact that what makes our nation great is not how well we can make and keep secrets. Rather it is our legacy of an open government--a defining factor of our democracy--a mark that sets us apart from most other nations in the world."
J. William Leonard Director
Information Security Oversight Office
National Archives and Records Administration, 2002

"Here [in the United States], we are, on the whole, doing well, and giving an example of a free system, which I trust will be more of a pilot to a good port, than a Beacon, warning from a bad one...A Government like ours has so many safety valves, ...that it carries within itself a relief against the infirmities from which the best of human Institutions can not be exempt."
James Madison

"The affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government."
Code of Virginia Policy Statement of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act

"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy..."
James Madison