[HN Gopher] Gainesville, Florida, put its internal emails online...
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Gainesville, Florida, put its internal emails online with few
limits
Author : danso
Score : 126 points
Date : 2020-04-03 16:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.montgomeryadvertiser.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.montgomeryadvertiser.com)
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Meanwhile, in Germany, 2 ministers (one acting, one former) have
| wiped their phones, including text messages, although there were
| ongoing investigations in misconduct.
|
| These are the people who are now using Corona to gain access to
| our location data collected by our phones. One set of rules for
| the rich, one set of rules for the poor.
| aleksaxyz wrote:
| Please be specific? I looked up "Germany ministers wiped phone"
| and saw a story about how the overall Defense Ministry wiped a
| phone of someone related to military contracts. What does that
| have to do with COVID-19 and data collection?
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| It's related to the COVID data gathering in a quite simple
| way: the government is telling the people gathering this data
| helps containing the disease and that they can be trusted to
| not abuse that data.
|
| This trust however is severely undermined by a lot of
| factors, like past abuses which came out due to Snowden, the
| continued push to collect data with claims of fighting terror
| or other crime - and, in my opinion, also extreme difference
| in transparency that politicians ask from citizens versus the
| transparency they themselves will commit to.
|
| The two cases were the former minister of defense, von der
| Leiten, and the current minister of transport, Scheuer. Both
| wiped their cellphone data although they knew that there are
| ongoing investigations. The investigations are called
| "Untersuchungsausschuss" - not sure how to correctly
| translate that. They are not criminal investigations,
| although they could to them, but basically a group of members
| of parliament investigate into affairs to find out if
| criminal misconduct happened or off processes need to be
| improved.
|
| In case of von der Leien, there were large amounts of money
| going to consultants, with some contracts not following the
| legal processes to give them out. In case of Scheuer, there
| is a completely bitched toll project, which is costing the
| taxpayer 500 millions, where there are clear sings of him if
| ignoring risks to be seen as a quick actor to help with an
| election, as well as giving information to one of the bidders
| for the contract.
|
| I don't trust politicians like that to only use the collected
| data for the given purpose and I don't trust them to stop the
| collection after the crisis is over. That's how, in my
| opinion, these topics are related.
| xnyan wrote:
| I would assume they are referring to the to the widespread
| [1,2,3] use of data gathered from smartphones for getting
| epidemiological data. Every nation is doing it.
|
| I would say it's not a great comparison, bad actors wiping
| their phone is not the same as gathering of bulk data to
| address a pandemic.
|
| 1) https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615329/coronavirus-
| south-...
|
| 2) https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2020/03/14/coronav
| ir...
|
| 3) https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200330/United-States-
| tra...
| iveqy wrote:
| Even if Sweden doesn't have a webpage for this, anyone can
| request anything https://www.government.se/emails-to-the-
| government-and-minis...
| newfeatureok wrote:
| Florida gets a lot of flak but this is good. Transparency is the
| only way to fight corruption. The only real downside to such
| absolute transparency like this is that most people don't want to
| be accountable.
| Ididntdothis wrote:
| I am not sure if this really fights corruption. It may also
| lead to a situation where official communication will be
| sanitized and the real stuff gets pushed to private channels.
| secstate wrote:
| As a public official in a small town, I have thought about doing
| this before. The legal issues always come up. But I also think
| that the people upset with the exposure after emailing public
| officials maybe don't fully understand that anything you
| communicate to a public official is defacto public and can be
| requested from anyone at anytime. The alternatives to that
| default are terrible for public confidence in officials.
| vidarh wrote:
| In Norway all communications with the government at national
| levels needs to be logged in journals that are publicly
| accessible by default. Not logging everything is a crime.
|
| Personal details can be redacted, and some things can be marked
| as not for public view, but doing so tends to be inviting
| scrutiny, as the big media organisations have people trawling
| the post journals.
| Keverw wrote:
| Nice to see public officials understanding this stuff :)
|
| So many cities have people untrained on this sort of stuff, I
| know there's been cities or other departments in cities
| deleting Facebook comments, and there's been some lawsuits over
| that. I kinda always got a feeling public officials feel like
| they are gods and above the law. Plus I think local officials
| can get away with things more compared to say a congress person
| or president since stuff they say and do have a bigger spot
| light on them. Probably more corruption happens at the local
| level is an assumption I've always had.
|
| Then if you go on YouTube can find tons of videos where cops or
| city officials get mad at being filmed, people go into the
| lobby of their local city and film the clerk there and some of
| them freak out or even goes as far as assaulting the camera
| person. However, I think some of those YouTubers though do it
| just to kinda just stir things up to see how people react so
| they'll get views, but technically it's still a first amendment
| protected activity.
| jawns wrote:
| > some of those YouTubers though do it just to kinda just
| stir things up to see how people react so they'll get views,
| but technically it's still a first amendment protected
| activity.
|
| These are popularly known as First Amendment Audits, and
| there are some riveting ones on YouTube. I know it may seem
| like they're trying to cause trouble, but in almost all
| cases, they're really just trying to determine whether
| constitutionally protected activities are being respected as
| such. But, honestly, the videos that show unconstitutional
| treatment are the most interesting to watch.
| Keverw wrote:
| Yep, I watched some before and got distracted watching them
| for days once since YouTube starts showing them everywhere
| like on the home page if you watch a few. Kinda gets you in
| a very depressed mood by how these people get treated for
| filming and exercising their rights but even some of the
| people filming I think are wrong too. Like some are very
| professional acting though, sorta like what an
| investigative journalist would be doing but some are kinda
| punks and just cussing and making fun of people though
| doing their jobs like even unelected employees. I mean sure
| you can cuss and flip people off since it's your right as
| speech but I kinda like the idea of respect and treating
| people how you'd want to be treated. I guess one of those
| pick your own battles type of things.
|
| But also watching them it makes me wonder if sworn police
| officers even have read the constitution, or just raised
| their hands and repeated what they were told during the
| swearing-in ceremony ... Then some of them seem to think
| the first amendment only applies if you work for the local
| news outlet such as channels like 2, 5, 7 or 12, etc...
| Like in some of the videos cops ask what news station or
| paper they work for. On the other hand though maybe the
| cops know anyways but try to use it as an intimidation
| tactic. Kinda like if you even know your basic civil
| rights, and start trying to exercise them they ask if you
| are some lawyer or something or if you are young ask if you
| are some law student. I guess they think only lawyers can
| know the law?
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > As a public official in a small town, I have thought about
| doing this before. The legal issues always come up.
|
| There shouldn't be any legal issues since it's already all
| public, but regardless there is some possible middle ground
| here:
|
| - All conversations regarding public policy and/or the
| allocation of public resources get published on the web by
| default. (With the possibility of making redactions on
| anonymizing folks, at the discretion of the public official.)
|
| - Things like emails from constituents asking for advice about
| personal issues and bulk newsletters would stay private unless
| FOIA'd.
|
| - Anything redacted or anonymized at the discretion of a public
| official can still be FOIA'd, and in the FOIA'd version of the
| email things would only be allowed to the redacted or
| anonymized to the extent allowable by law.
|
| This is similar to how NYC's proposed algorithmic transparency
| legislation would have worked, where software involved in
| allocating public resources needs to be public but the rest of
| the software does not.
| CapriciousCptl wrote:
| A problem with complete transparency like this in our new era of
| yellow journalism is bad actors can cherry pick basically
| anything and get pageviews and mindshare by manufacturing
| outrage. Moreover, the kinds of things that are legitimately
| controversial get moved to other mediums.
| BubRoss wrote:
| People might even make hyperbolic assumptions about the future
| while preying on uncertainty.
| wyxuan wrote:
| They mentioned Palo Alto, and I think it's a decent example. If
| you email Citi council, your email will be printed out and made
| accessible during council meeting and also made public. However,
| the sheer volume of email and the obscurity surrounding the
| existence of this public email makes it very non controversial.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| This reminds me of politicians "going transparent" in The Circle.
| I would loathe to be in a position where every casual
| conversation I had was subject to public scrutiny.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's better to think of it that way. If you get sued, all of
| your written communications will be read.
|
| It's pretty trivial to supervise email in O365 or Google, so if
| you're a risk or someone feels like it, it's likely your
| communications are getting looked at.
| aleksaxyz wrote:
| Having worked in the public sector in the U.S., email
| conversations are sterile for the fact that they are always
| potentially accessible through Freedom of Information Act
| requests. No one's having thoughtful and personal conversations
| over internal emails.
|
| But there does need to be a warning to the public that their
| emails are going to be public. Just so they aren't surprised
| and can schedule a call instead of going into detail via email.
| [deleted]
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > But there does need to be a warning to the public that
| their emails are going to be public.
|
| It seems like Gmail et al. could just add a popup warning
| folks before sending anything to a .gov email. Folks running
| their own email servers hopefully know better already.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _It seems like Gmail et al. could just add a popup
| warning folks before sending anything to a .gov email._
|
| If I'm not mistaken, Gmail _also_ keeps a record of your
| emails too, does it not?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jotakami wrote:
| I'm a resident of Gainesville and I was completely unaware of
| this. Now I know not to send anything sensitive to a local
| government email address...
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| In Florida, almost anything you send to any level of state or
| local government is public. If you're a customer of GRU, it's
| very likely that I could request your last year of bills, your
| address (if I know your name), etc. There are definitely some
| drawbacks of the very broad public records laws here.
| Fjolsvith wrote:
| Just use your Mayor's private email server. They'll be sure to
| acid wash the drives when they leave office.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| It's a big money saver probably.
|
| FOIA laws usually make most of this stuff public anyway, except
| you run it through lawyers and waste alot of time and energy. PII
| shouldn't be in email anyway.
| saila wrote:
| Most people still think email is private for whatever reason.
|
| City and other government contact pages should have big red
| flags making it clear that your correspondence could be made
| public at any time.
|
| Even the record of correspondence with a government agency
| should be considered PII and/or sensitive, depending on the
| agency and subject matter.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Florida government websites do have these warnings, as well
| as in email auto responders.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| Transparency does have its pros & cons. One of the reasons for
| the whole Florida Man meme is because of Florida's powerful
| Sunshine laws that make police reports easily accessible to the
| public
| BubRoss wrote:
| This sounds all pro to me.
| kreitje wrote:
| Yes and no. I have received a handful of requests from
| lawyers to remove their clients charges from a news
| aggregator I ran. All of them had their charges dropped but
| when potential employers were searching them online they
| would come across the booking information.
| qznc wrote:
| What is the matter with losing a little bit of privacy? You have
| nothing to hide, don't you? /s
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(page generated 2020-04-04 23:00 UTC)