State officials keep e-mail from view. "I don't care if it's delivered by carrier pigeon, it's a record."
| March 16, 2008 |  View for printing |
In New Jersey, the governor's e-mails might shed light on whether he inappropriately conferred with a labor leader he once dated. In Detroit, the mayor's text messages revealed a sexually charged scandal. In California, a fight rages for access to e-mails sent by a city councilwoman about a controversial biological laboratory.
Even the White House has been under pressure from Democrats in Congress over its problem-plagued e-mail system.
While e-mail and text messaging has become a hugely popular way to communicate throughout society, governments at all levels are often unwilling to let the public see the e-mails of their elected officials.
Officially, e-mails in all but a handful of states are treated like paper documents and subject to Freedom of Information requests. But most of these states have rules allowing them to choose which e-mails to turn over, and most decide on their own when e-mail records are deleted.
"There seems to be an attitude throughout government — at all levels — that somehow electronic communications are of its own kind and not subject to the laws in the way that print communications are," said Patrice McDermott, director of OpenTheGovernment.org.
By Tom Hester Jr., Associated Press
Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/in ... mails_N.htm
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Text messages enter public-records debate
By Ledyard King, Gannett News Service
Those supposedly private messages that public officials dash off on their government cellphones to friends and colleagues aren't necessarily private after all.
Courts, lawyers and states are increasingly treating these typed text messages as public documents subject to the same disclosure laws — including the federal Freedom of Information Act — that apply to e-mails and paper records.
"I don't care if it's delivered by carrier pigeon, it's a record," said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition at the University of Missouri. "If you're using public time or your public office, you're creating public records every time you hit send."
Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/wireles ... tmsgs_N.htm
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