Boston City Government Discovers Email Retention 184
An anonymous reader writes "The Boston Globe, covering a battle to unseat the 16-year incumbent mayor, has found out that the city has no email retention policy. A city official who receives hundreds of emails a day was found to have only 18 emails in his mailbox. The city has enabled journaling on its Exchange server in response. The Globe also notes that they had to curtail requests for emails under the Open Records law because for each mailbox, 'City officials estimated they would charge $5,000 for six months worth of email.'"
Re:Important emails (Score:5, Insightful)
setenv $EMAIL_STORAGE =
New manning slot? (Score:5, Insightful)
No hands. Sucks to be an IT admin for the City of Boston about now.
Re:No retention? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the period between 1995 and 2015 will be remembered as a dark age for recordkeeping of all kinds.
Re:Important emails (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, if it were just prostitution and extramarital affairs, I wouldn't care if their emails were deleted. Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant. I know that the Republicans saw it as a huge victory when Clinton was impeached basically for having an extramarital affair (and don't tell me that it was for perjury; it was his personal life that was on trial), but, in the grand scheme of things, personal infidelity is probably not the biggest "crime" a public official can commit. I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public, but happens to be a philander, over a president who is completely devoted to his wife, but is willing to step on civil liberties, support torture, or sell out the American public to corporate interests. Likewise, I'm much less concerned about a president who lies about his private life than one who lies about justifications for war.
So, no, I'm not particularly concerned about politicians hiding emails to their girlfriends/boyfriends. We should be so lucky if that's all they were hiding. It's more the potential bribes, nepotism/cronyism, and backroom deals that I'm worried about. Those are the type of things that actually conflict with good governance—in other words, government corruption.
Re:This is why term limits are needed (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, it's horribly corrupt and has serious issues, but they did get a lot done, and try getting the government to give a damn about you now. Not going to happen as long as the Republicans are trying their hardest to stop living wages and health care and the Democrats are so horribly incompetent.
Re:Important emails (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, if it were just prostitution and extramarital affairs, I wouldn't care if their emails were deleted. Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant.
It is a question of trust. If they will not keep their word to a person they have pledged their life to, and who is (or should be) the closest to them in the world, then they may be lying to me too...
That said, I don't really trust a damn one of them...
Re:Why tagged "republicans"??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shockingly, there have only been 5 mayors since 1950. Loyal city.
"Loyal" is not the word I would choose.
It's a matter of power, not intelligence (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems to me that the bigger the city, the more stupid the voters are...
You obviously don't understand how machine politics works. Voters are not dumb:
1. individuals allied with the incumbent receive substantial benefit and thus vote for the incumbent
2. those who are not allied are systematically disenfranchised
It's not a matter of dumb/smart, it's a matter of organized/unorganized. Those who are organized (the incumbent) wield significant power to ensure that those without power have difficulty organizing (and thus threatening their power).
Re:Retention is the BIG issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Originally, I felt that email for government should be retained, however there really does need to be a different consideration between formal and informal email ie. email that is a part of formal administrative functions and email that just represents informal communications.
The question is where exactly do you fit in email between old world snail mail and a conversation whether in person on via say voip. Very interesting when you compare voip to email, as they both represent digital electronic transmission via the vary same infrastructure the only difference is the formatting of those messages.
So really the question is whether all communications between politicians and private parties or government departments should be recorded or whether there is a substantive difference between formal and informal communications and only formal communications should be recorded and retained and informal communications non instructional, non informative and non directional should just be allowed to fade away.
End users can't enforce retention (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Important emails (Score:3, Insightful)
That's where Bush and Cheney won in spades because they kept their dealings as "executive rights" so nobody could get them in court to answer for things like Gitmo...they simply refused the summons and fired any DoJ officers that pushed them. They also used "executive privilege" to get out of several other related cases for them and their buddies. It was hilarious when a Republican President had to deal with Democrat controlled Congress "after Clinton" and the Democrats went out of their way to prove they weren't nasty, even when they had the President dead to rights for ACTUAL impeachment obstructing justice in the spying case and gitmo. BushCo benefited from the "but Clinton" defense in spades the last 2 years.
Obama really needs to issue an executive order to lock them (and their families, aids, hairdressers, etc) up until we get answers to some of those questions... after all the President has that right now and there's empty space in Gitmo soon for new political prisoners!
Re:No retention? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Important emails (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow, I don't know why anyone modded you insightful, you spouted nothing that hasn't already been said by the Bush bashing comic strips and you even kept it as vague as possible to leave no avenue of address to the specifics of your claims. If you hadn't done that one thing, you would have been shot down by the simplest observations in the scenario. So I have to ask, what was done that warranted impeachments and be specific enough that it can be addressed. Your not going to be able to hash anything out that is truthful and hasn't already been proven to not be impeachment worthy.
As for Obama, you are a complete idiot. The constitution says you cannot work corruption of blood which is exactly what you are suggesting. Why in the fuck can you claim on person violated the constitution or deserved to be impeached with no hard facts to back it up while advocating that the current administration do one of the most abhorrent acts any sitting president could do that not only is forbidden in the constitution, but also a key reason why we rebelled from England in the first place. Is it the ends justify the means only when you agree with it or something?
Re:Important emails (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when has any politician actually pledge themselves to you or the people.
It's a matter of importance. If they can't keep a pledge, then why do you expect them to remain truthful to you or the people or the office in which they hold? We have already seen people like Clinton violate the Constitution and the war powers act with the Balkan occupation.
You do not need proof to understand that less of a thread binds them to a job compared to a spouse they gave vows to.