Labor Dept. Wanted $1M For E-mail Addresses of Political Appointees 154
Virtucon writes with this snippet from an Associated Press story as carried by TwinCities.com: "'The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged—but often happens anyway—due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.' The reason for the $1 million dollar request was to do research including going to backup tapes. Some of the information has been turned over to AP but it still seems that the government just can't get their hands on e-mail addresses for their own people."
Time for an amendment for FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to cap, or eliminatee, fees charged to citizens seeking information from the government. Hell, they already paid for the information's creation via taxes anyway.
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Re:Time for an amendment for FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
They were violating their own regulation by charging a news organization.
Why should a "news organization" be treated any differently than anyone else? Last time I read the Constitution, it appeared to apply to everyone equally, not just a select list of government approved organizations.
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They were violating their own regulation by charging a news organization.
Why should a "news organization" be treated any differently than anyone else? Last time I read the Constitution, it appeared to apply to everyone equally, not just a select list of government approved organizations.
You skipped over the inconvenient part in his post: "They were violating their own regulation..."
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Why should a "news organization" be treated any differently than anyone else? Last time I read the Constitution, it appeared to apply to everyone equally, not just a select list of government approved organizations.
Oh, you charming little babe-in-the-woods, you. Still laboring under the illusion that what they taught you in your high-school civics class actually applies in the real world. Neither you nor a "news organization" have anywhere near the clout necessary to get an agency like The Department of Labor to actually act like branch of a government that represents the citizens. You need some serious corporate clout for that. Yes, the media still swings some weight, but they know that if they want to keep that seat
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Because of the benefit to tax payers from it. If mass media requests information, they generally intend to relay it to lots of people if they find anything interesting or noteworthy. This is very different from Joe Blow Conspiracy Nut making hundreds of FOIA requests that cost lots of money to process to get the information that isn't useful to anyone, including the person who is asking for it. I agree there need to be reasonable limits on costs, but you still need some mechanism to prevent wasteful abus
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We need to cap, or eliminatee, fees charged to citizens seeking information from the government. Hell, they already paid for the information's creation via taxes anyway.
you don't need a new law as such, you need a defined penalty for ignoring the current one. like, if they had to pay penalties to AP for taking so long and being so dickheads about it(a fine that would be from government to that same government wouldn't be much of a fine!).
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And the fine should be paid out of a pool from the salary of the top N officials in the non-compliant department.
Re:Time for an amendment for FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
How exactly would a fine help.
I am "Government Agency"
I do bad things.
Someone wants info on bad things I do.
I delay. Then I charge. Then I delay more.
Peons sue me to pay a fine to them.
I delay.
I delay more.
I pay fine from my budget that comes from the peons.
Many peons give money through me to 1 peon.
Next year I include these costs in my budget.
I now control more money.
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See earlier post. Apply the fine to the management of the agency being fined, not to the agency. (Personally I think it should be pro-rata, with half the fine being assessed against the top management, half the rest against his top subordinants, half the rest against their top subordinants, etc. When you get out of management, if the entire fine isn't covered, scale all the fines up until it IS covered. I feel undecided against confidential personnel. They aren't officially management, but sometimes th
Re:Time for an amendment for FOIA (Score:4)
There are only 2 real answers.
Answer 1 Prison.
Answer 2:
More complicated.
The problem here is power and control. The US government is supposed to be one in which it "Serves" the public.
They have too much power. Too much control. It needs to be ripped back from them. It needs to be done before they make it impossible.
They are very close now.
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I've personally run into this problem on a couple of occasions when making FOI requests. Once I requested court transcripts from a case that I wanted to provide to the local newspaper as evidence of an incredibly incompetent prosecutor, but the county courthouse wanted thousands of dollars to copy the transcripts and would not allow me to simply come down and copy them myself. I ran into a similar problem with the Department of Transportation when trying to build a database of VIN numbers for a used car sal
Re:Time for an amendment for FOIA (Score:5, Insightful)
... but the county courthouse wanted thousands of dollars to copy the transcripts and would not allow me to simply come down and copy them myself.
I should hope not. I don't want official transcripts to be handled by any random member of the community - they could be damaged or destroyed that way, maliciously or otherwise. Yes, the person doing that might be charged after the fact, but the documentation is still gone. So I'm glad they didn't hand you official government documents to dick around with however you wanted to. And, in fact, I'm not sorry that they wanted to charge you for the extra work they had to go to for you - your fellow citizens don't need to pay for your particular hobby horse.
Besides, if the newspaper were seriously interested in your story, they would have submitted the FOIA request themselves (and paid for it). The sad truth is that reporters get "leads" from people with axes to grind all the time and the best way to deal with them is to say "Docs or it didn't happen". Unless you can present a more compelling story, you're just another nut with an agenda.
Finally, as for the DOT "killing your business model", it's not the government's job to provide extra services to make your business succeed. You should have known about the data processing methods and their associated costs involved before you started the business. If the only people who wanted the data available were folks (like you) hoping to profit by free-riding on special work (i.e., computer system development) that they wanted done by the government, I see no reason that your fellow taxpayers should pay for your hand out.
Re:Time for an amendment for FOIA (Score:4, Insightful)
Big Surprise from the Obama Administration.
That's right, those loopholes are for Whites Only.
No, they apply for all Chicago scofflaws and thugs.
Make them eat Spam! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm shocked that top government officials are using secret government email addresses. We should insist that they turn over every email address so that they all have to waste hours each day deleting spam and irrelevant stuff like the rest of us!
If only (Score:2)
If only they had a large database with all of this stuff in it.
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Sadly, no:
T
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Why is this shady? I bet every senior executive in industry has a public facing email that their staff handles, and then a restricted email address that is disclosed only to people who he works closely with.
It seems to me this smells like the usual partisan bullshit.
Re:Make them eat Spam! (Score:5, Insightful)
Under Sorbanes-Oxley, if a private corporation gets sued, they need to provide *all* relevant emails as part of discovery. That would include any restricted email addresses.
The same kind of things apply to government and the FOIA.
Um, really? Government accountability is a partisan issue?
I don't care what side of the political spectrum you're on -- you have to follow the rules and laws, and this has the smell of being intended to skirt around those. Republican, Democrat, Communist -- just follow the damned rules.
In this case, FOIA requests failed to return the emails in these other addresses, and they didn't know how to find them all.
So, if it isn't just shady behavior, it has the net effect of hiding information because people don't know to go looking there.
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In this case, FOIA requests failed to return the emails in these other addresses, and they didn't know how to find them all.
That is not true, according to the article from AP.
Agencies where the AP so far has identified secret addresses, including the Labor Department and HHS, said maintaining non-public email accounts allows senior officials to keep separate their internal messages with agency employees from emails they exchange with the public. They also said public and non-public accounts are always searched in response to official requests and the records are provided as necessary.
Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists o
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Thank you.
The smell of partisan bullshit gets stronger every day.
Re: Make them eat Spam! (Score:3)
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Some are official alternate mailboxes, and while sometimes suspect, at least are registered and subject to FOIA requests but not all.
Lisa Jackson's secret email address was 'Richard Windsor', a fictitious employee that was not disclosed on FOIA requests until someone managed to make the connection.
So it's not like you have LJackson@EPA.gov for the public and LJ774@EPA.Gov for private; in these cases you have completely hidden and unregistered aliases which are being used to perform official business and to
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It's shady if the separate e-mail addresses are not linked to a specific person. In one instance, a government employee made up an alias which people thought was a unique individual at the agency.
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Then you have utterly failed to read and understand the article.
These aren't outside addresses -- these are secondary, government issued addresses at the exact same domains as the published ones.
This is not a case of "I will use my own email since the government infrastructure sucks" (which is still technically illegal but
Secret or PRIVATE? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Secret or PRIVATE? (Score:4, Informative)
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Does $detiy own .com ? ;-)
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But doesn't secret sound much more devious and worthy of giving clicks to?
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No, no they aren't:
There is no 'private' in this context. This is official government business, and by law it needs to be recorded.
This doesn't pass the smell test. In fact, it fails it utterly.
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No, they are not private addresses.
public officials. they recognized as much, too.
what good would be being required to preserve records if they had another mail that wasn't preserved..
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And if the response is that these addresses were also limited to receiving mail from specified senders, well, that's probably good enough to be called illegal also.
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So you wouldn't have had an issue with Dick Cheney having a separate, "private" email account that he used in office, because certainly he wouldn't have discussed anything important there that he wanted 'off the books', right?
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The unexpectedly transparent (Score:3)
President Obama said he was committed to being the most transparent Administration in history. It seems to be coming true, but not in the way votes expected. But it is true, the administration is becoming increasing transparent.
The EPA’s Secret Email Accounts [weeklystandard.com]
Most Transparent Administration Evah is Riddled with Secret Email Addresses [pjmedia.com]
More secret email accounts for Obama’s EPA chief? [theblaze.com]
So, this can be added to the growing list of administration scandals fighting for public attention: Benghazi, IRS suppression of conservative political groups, IRS suppression of orthodox religious groups, IRS suppression of adoption, IRS seizure of health records, exploding costs for healthcare reform, ....
I guess it must be morning wherever the press has been on vacation the last couple of years.
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Yes, the mistake Obama made was not just ignoring FOIA requests like the previous administration did.
Not to mention doing things like outing the wives of reporters writing critical articles.
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From most reports the current administration has one of the worse records on responding to FOIA request in decades.
Just Google "obama record on foia"
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Ugh. You are right.
What a disappointment.
wait (Score:3)
Couldn't they just ask Bradley Manning to get them for him? Oh wait...
Transparency and Accountability (Score:3)
It could be reasonably argued that government officials hava a legitimate need for both publicly-facing published email addresses and private, unpublished email addresses for inter-governmental communication. Presumably the former would be handled by their staffs for public communication and the latter used for professional communications between government officials.
If that were the issue, there would be no scandal here, merely a difference of opinion between what is good practice. What makes this a scandal is not that the email addresses themselves were secret, but that 1). The practice of maintaining secret email accounts was itself secret 2.) With one single exception the agencies exempted the contents of the secret email accounts from FOI searches. 3) In violation of its own policy agencies sought to charge the AP fee, and quite a hight one.
So this looks like a widespread attempt by government officials to avoid transparency and accountability, not a pragmatic attempt to manage their inboxes efficiently.
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That's an incredibly naive fantasy. How old are you? 12?
How are you going to do basic management tasks such as personnel administration under those conditions? And medical claims or tax enforcement actions? Or SEC enforcement efforts? How about military planning? National security issues? Process tax returns?
No organization dealing with real life can function under the conditions you propose.
Ahahahah (Score:2)
As the posters all said...
"CHANGE"
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As the posters all said...
"CHANGE"
Can I HOPE it stops?
Scarier than the corruption implied... (Score:2)
...by secret email addresses is the notion that maybe the Labor Department was mostly being honest.
It's scary because it paints the reality of a large government bureaucracy essentially unaccountable even to the people internal to it theoretically with their hands on the levers of control, like a big bus being driven on a huge sheet of ice where you can brake, accelerate and steer but the actual responses to your inputs may have completely different outcomes than what you expect.
It seems unfathomable that t
Re:Incompetence (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with Hanlon's razor is no one ever seems to believe it when it goes up against their conspiracy theories. It's such a helpful rule for separating conspiracy theories from reasonable assertions. Maybe Hanlon was a member of the Illuminati, or something.
Re:Incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
And the IRS was not politically targeting conservative groups.
Funny how people are so quick to admit they are idiots when they are caught doing something they shouldn't be doing.
Nobody's buying it.
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E-mail Scandal at the EPA - The Obama administration embraces secrecy and stonewalling [nationalreview.com].
Who is 'Richard Windsor'? [nationalreview.com]
In The Liberal War on on Transparency, published by Threshold Editions last month, I revealed the existence of a series of black, or “alias” email accounts used by EPA administrators. These were actively instituted by none other than Carol Browner, who designed her own secret address, for an account that I also learned was set to “auto-delete”.
You remember Ms. Browner? She’s the lady who suddenly ordered her computer hard drive be reformatted and backup tapes be erased, just hours after a federal court issued a “preserve” order that her lawyers at the Clinton Justice Department insisted they hadn’t yet told her about? She’s the one who said it didn’t matter because she didn’t use her computer for email anyway? Yes, that one. . . more [nationalreview.com]
Re:Incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree.
The only reason I can think of to have a secret email address is to try to skirt any paper trail and FOIA requests.
If people are conducting their official business in secret email accounts, it's hard NOT to think the sole motivation is to fly under the radar. If at the end you provide the 'official' account (which has nothing interesting in it), you can claim nothing happened.
These people already *had* official accounts, why would they need a second, undocumented email address? This stinks of having the official account to do mundane things, and the secret account to do all of the other stuff.
In this case, I'm going to assume malice -- since it actually had the effect of people inadequately responding to FOIA requests, because all of the good stuff was buried in a second account nobody knew about.
Re:Incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto. It is malice to obfuscate the email system.
But, more important, these email addresses aren't really 'secret'. They were presumably used, so those who needed/wanted to use them knew them. This is just an undisclosed system. FOIA requires disclosure. The cost of uncovering a surreptitious system should not be borne by the requester.
And truly, if the agency is claiming they cannot determine the addresses of their email system(s), be they acknowledged or surreptitious, perhaps they need to hire in some contractors to fix that for them. Like the FBI. It is illegal, you know.
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These people already *had* official accounts, why would they need a second, undocumented email address?
So they could could engage in private conversations, and feel free to express their true opinions. Eliminating all privacy for public employees might seem like a great idea at first, but it is likely to engender a culture where people toe the official line, and are afraid to report problems or concerns because their comments might later be misconstrued by a journalist or lawyer that is either ignorant or unconcerned about the context.
Re:Incompetence (Score:5, Insightful)
Except laws already say that all of this stuff needs to be recorded.
There is no private here. If you're doing Official Government Business, you have to comply with the law. The law says that any and all communications you do are covered under a FOIA request.
Setting up a second email account for the same person bypasses the whole process, and then you get a case like this where they have no idea if they've complied with the request or not, because nobody knew about the email account.
And if you hide half of the context, how would anybody ever take then in context??
Sorry, but I don't see any situation in which this is beneficial to anybody except for a bunch of political appointees trying to cover their asses, or possibly cover up questionable actions.
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No. You're wrong. Actually, you're assumption is wrong.
They set up second e-mail addresses because as public figures, their well-known e-mail addresses are flooded with crap from everyone and their dog who thinks it is neat to directly e-mail a Presidential appointee. They work for the PEOPLE, don't you know. The second address is used to do actual work, not bypass any process.
Those second addresses are fully subject to FOIA and it was not suggested in the article that they were "secret" -- just "non-disclo
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The second address is used to do actual work, not bypass any process.
Your first quote applies:
No. You're wrong. Actually, you're assumption is wrong.
E-mail Scandal at the EPA - The Obama administration embraces secrecy and stonewalling [nationalreview.com].
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My mistake. I thought this discussion was specifically about the DOJ stupidly requesting $1+ million from AP for FOIA requests and "private" e-mail addresses.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130604/DA6MPFHG2.html [myway.com]
You've dug up an article from January. We're now in June. Yes, *that* instance was quite probably criminal. What is being reported NOW is something totally different.
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My mistake. I thought this discussion was specifically about the DOJ stupidly requesting $1+ million from AP for FOIA requests and "private" e-mail addresses.
You are a slippery weasel with words. The DOJ demanded one million dollars to fulfill a single specific FOIA request for non-disclosed email addresses.
Do you really really think that it costs a million dollars to run a fucking LDAP query? Is there some job where we can be paid that much for something so mundane? Are you really so naive to ascribe this to simple stupidity; that they forgot the addresses, otherwise they would tell?
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From the article, a government employee named "Lisa Jackson" set up a separate ID with the alias "Richard Windsor" who people assumed was a unique individual.
I think that dismantles your argument about having one public facing e-mail address for crap and a private one for work. You're not going to get much work done if everyone in the organization is using different names for different things.
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Not really. The mention of "Lisa Jackson" (EPA Administrator) was from an incident in January -- 5 months ago.
This one addresses the DoJ's stupid request for $1+ million from AP to disclose all e-mail addresses and the use of second e-mail addresses by various agencies. None of those indicate anything similar to what Ms. Jackson did at all.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130604/DA6MPFHG2.html [myway.com]
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Not really. The mention of "Lisa Jackson" (EPA Administrator) was from an incident in January -- 5 months ago.
It wasn't an "incident," it was a pattern of behavior stretching over a period of years. It involved secret email address like those being used at other agencies. This has been going on at multiple agencies for quite some time.
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Those second addresses are fully subject to FOIA and it was not suggested in the article that they were "secret" -- just "non-disclosed".
Can you explain the difference between secret and non-disclosed, when the definition of secret is essentially to not disclose something? Can you explain how, in this case, the supposed non-disclosed email address are subject to FOIA? The problem here is not the usage of said addresses, but instead their usage (whether intentional, or incidental) to evade FOIA requests.
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Except laws already say that all of this stuff needs to be recorded.
My point was not about what is legal, but about what makes sense. The law says that all official business has to be done through official channels, which are open to public scrutiny. But the result is that we have less effective government because people avoid expressing themselves openly, and set up illegal side channels. Prior to Watergate, nearly everything that happened in the Oval Office was recorded. The tapes of the meetings and phone calls by JFK and LBJ have been a goldmine for historians. But
Re:Incompetence (Score:4, Informative)
I think you have this wrong. There are already ways for government officials that actually need it to get confidential information and candid opinions. This is something different. The point of transparency is to provide information on current government operations so that the public can provide feedback to the government, and so that voters can hold the government accountable. The benefit to historians is ancillary. There is no way now to provide feedback to the JFK and LBJ administrations, they are long gone. There is no way to improve their effectiveness. All that is left is the history. Voters need to be able to act every 1-4 years, depending on the office. The actions at EPA [nationalreview.com] and other agencies clearly undermines providing that information and subverts accountability. Part of the reason this is occurring is that many people currently in government aren't separating there personal views from their government job and are illegitimately using their government position to engage in activism. That at least partially explains why the IRS is now involved in so many scandals for suppressing conservative political groups, conservative religious groups, Jewish groups, pro-life groups, and even adoptive parents. That also explains why they want to hide their tracks.
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If you're doing Official Government Business, you have to comply with the law.
Only if there are personal consequences for failing to do so.
Otherwise, compliance is optional.
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Left? the US doesn't have a left. it has a right and far right.
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Your point seems to be that you are the only 'objective' one here and your 'enemies' are biased. The very fact that you think that can be reinforced by others who have no facts, only biases, proves you are wrong. If all the people who disagree with you are offering only unsupported or biased opinions, you should not change your fact based opinion in the slightest. If hsmith ()or me for that matter) has no objective facts, then he has given you no new data to either reinforce or moderate your conclusion. So,
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Only if the demarcation between 'left' and 'right' is 'prohibiting/allowing ownership of property'. Because 'state ownership of land' is about the only plank the European left cares about that the American left doesn't.
The left in America believes in abortion rights, gay marriage, social and racial justice, legalizing drugs, social safety nets, taxing the rich, limiting corporate power, restricting corporate executive pay, and many other of the planks in the international leftist movement.
Several members in
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The left in America claims to believe in abortion rights, gay marriage, social and racial justice, legalizing drugs, social safety nets, taxing the rich, limiting corporate power, restricting corporate executive pay, and many other of the planks in the international leftist movement. In practice, there is no discernible difference, as evidenced by little to no progress in any of those areas, even during periods of "Left" supermajority.
FTFY.
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You make a valid point. I guess it's more that 'the left' isn't really in power in large numbers. Or not larger numbers than 'the right' who oppose those issues. And even left-leaning politicians want to get reelected. But I do dispute that there are no people in the US, or in our government, who believe in those issues.
Also, looking at the long game, more of that will eventually come to pass here in the US, if we don't collapse first.
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Left? the US doesn't have a left. it has a right and far right.
That is a mistaken idea commonly held by people without a strong understanding of the American political system and politics. The US does in fact have a full political spectrum from left to right, including real, honest to Lenin and Marx Communists [pjmedia.com], and Communist Party [cpusa.org]. (More than one, actually.) It even includes people who have been willing to go the Stalin or Pol Pot route (see below after reading the rest of this). The difference is that people in the United States generally won't vote for Communist
Re:Incompetence (Score:4)
And here we are.
Its legal because I am a lib and I hate Sarah!
Good argument.
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Apple and Oranges. Sarah Palin and staff were using non-State issued e-mail addresses to avoid record retention laws.
The article here talks about STATE-issued e-mail addresses to avoid spam and frivolous e-mail filling up their inbox. No public e-mail addresses were issued, and FOIA requests for e-mail included messages from the multiple addresses.
Re: Incompetence (Score:2)
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The article here talks about STATE-issued e-mail addresses to avoid spam and frivolous e-mail filling up their inbox. No public e-mail addresses were issued, and FOIA requests for e-mail included messages from the multiple addresses.
Not in all cases. That is unless the government now owns gmail.
Congress demands EPA’s secret email accounts [washingtontimes.com]
Mr. Horner uncovered the existence of the secret emails . . . Mr. Horner said . . . two former EPA officials told him about the “Richard Windsor” email and said it was “one of the alternate email addresses she used.”
He said he has also discovered some EPA employees setting up private gmail accounts using their first and last names and the word EPA as a standard formula.
“They’ve been moving government over to private email,” Mr. Horner told The Washington Times. “In the book, I reveal private servers the White House had universities and pressure groups set up so they can conduct discussions.”
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> The only reason I can think of to have a secret email address is to try to skirt any paper trail and
> FOIA requests.
There was a nail, you just hit it on the head. I find it amazing that people get away with this at all, this would have never flown, not once, not for a day, at ANY job I EVER had. I keep my own email, seperate from any job, on purpose. In fact the ONLY work related emails I have ever sent from my personal account have fallen into a couple of very specific categories.
1. Testing the ema
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Wow, no.
This doesn't have anything to do with a personal account, nor keeping personal/work e-mail separate. It isn't outside e-mail. This is a "everyone and their dog has this e-mail address, so my mailbox is useless -- get me a second one to work internally on" issue.
The information, and mailbox itself is fully subject to FOIA.
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The information, and mailbox itself is fully subject to FOIA.
Except we just found out it isnt actually subject to FOIA, unless you cough up a pile of $$$$'s (which is just the current excuse not to release the information.)
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No you didn't. That was one agency, and they rescinded that almost immediately and already provided the information.
That was one whiny little bitch in the storage branch realizing he'd have to do a shitload of work and trying to get out of it without thinking or running it thru General Counsel's office.
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Or perhaps they just wanted to get their emails on their smartphone and had to skirt the IT policies by forwarding everything from their business account to their personal account. The they hit "Reply", it comes from their personal account, and next thing you know, business is being conducted through the personal account.
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So, in context of your 'explanation' for this, explain how a second government address was used and how it differed from the first one.
Because, if you can access the second government issued email address on your smart phone, you bloody well could have accessed the first one.
See, there is no 'personal account' here. There's a second, government issued (but not published) email address. One which conveniently is difficult to track down to comply with FOIA requests.
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Oh boy, it would help if I read tfs, eh?
I'll go hide over here....
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That doesn't quite explain how Lisa Jackson used the email of fictitious employee 'Richard Windsor' to conduct official EPA business off book.
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An identity that later won internal awards for ethics "scholar of ethical behavior [nationalreview.com].”
Of course this is also the administration who also was caught having visiting with lobbyists at a local Caribou coffee shop [nytimes.com] (ie secretly) instead of bringing them into the White House where they would show up in the visitor logs.
Most transparent administration evah eh?
Between the IRS targeting conservatives, a few officials being held in contempt of congress (and court), Obama sleeping on the job when his ambassador in
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I lived through the Nixon era. Calling what is going on in Washington more corrupt than what was happening under Nixon is ridiculous.
The stuff going on now doesn't even rise to the level of the Iran-Contra affair.
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You are also looking back through history at the Nixon era and what else has come out.
We've got spying on journalists, enemies lists (only public ones in the case of Obama), using the IRS to target political opponents... the only thing we are missing is a break-in by his subordinates and a subsequent cover-up... granted we've got multiple cover-ups and perjury's ongoing today.
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They wanted to pass on to the AP the cost of retrieving the tapes from their off-site storage facility, hire a couple dozen additional workers for a month to pour over the data on the tapes, and other crazy costs.
They are not allowed to pass on those costs, they are only allowed to pass on reasonable copier costs after the first 100 pages.
But hey, that's just the law - no need to sticklers about it!
Relational Database FTW! (Score:2)
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"According to law, any email older than 6 months on a server (example yahoo or google mail) is considered abandoned and available to investigative groups and agencies without warrant."
"investigative groups and agencies' is limited to the Government. By law. Which obviously should be repealed. And probably doesn't cover government servers, and should not cover my corporate servers.
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"According to law, any email older than 6 months on a server (example yahoo or google mail) is considered abandoned and available to investigative groups and agencies without warrant."
So you're saying all of the subfolders for my email account is full of abandoned messages even though it's an actively used account? Are you sure you don't mean email account?
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"According to law, any email older than 6 months on a server (example yahoo or google mail) is considered abandoned and available to investigative groups and agencies without warrant."
So you're saying all of the subfolders for my email account is full of abandoned messages even though it's an actively used account? Are you sure you don't mean email account?
The first one. [wikipedia.org]
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Well, that's good to know. Time to back them up to a DVD and purge them from the mailserver.
Re:This is a whole heap of awesome... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And then they destroyed the backup tapes (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the primary reasons this sort of shit continues is idiots like you who think there is any difference at all between republicans and democrats. You've been had my friend.
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Would you oppose a White House that you rely on to give you fo
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The biggest thing I'm confused about is why the general electorate is quiet on this.
Most of the popular press isnt reporting it, and even when they do its 30 seconds followed by 2 hours of love for Obama.