TDEx Goes to DPS!
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
Remember back during the regular legislative session when there was an outcry over Gov. Rick Perry running the Texas Data Exchange (TDEx), a massive data system for police officials that its operators hoped would one day contain information on nearly every Texan. Within days of the Observer’s expose on the database, a bill was filed to move it out of the governor’s office where it could potentially be used for political purposes to the Department of Public Safety, a professional law enforcement agency presumably insulated from politics. The governor’s office through Homeland Security Director Steve McCraw and legislative allies fought the move. Despite the hue and cry, by session’s end the authoritarian wing of the Republican Party emerged victorious. TDEx remained with the governor. As San Antonio Republican Rep. Frank Corte crowed, “The governor is responsible for public safety.”
Well, on October 10, the governor quietly gave TDEx to DPS. Interestingly, the October agreement ceding control of TDEx was not signed by McCraw but by Brian Newby, the governor’s chief of staff. The program will now be under DPS’s Texas Crime Information Center, where, according to a DPS spokesperson, “there are strict rules about how information is placed into the system and how it is accessed.”
Could Perry’s national ambitions have something to do with this dramatic reversal?
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Do you know if TDEX information on a particular individual is available to that individual? Assume there to be no ongoing criminal investigation or prosecution of that individual, and assume also that the individual is not under community supervision.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Doran,
Look on our blog for a post titled “Are You in TDEx?” (http://www.texasobserver.org/blog/?p=269). It lays out how someone can find out if they are in TDEx. We’d love to know what you find!
Jake