Derisive diatribes about the state of the nation, nation states and swerving leftward
17 April 2007
Hiding from the public eye
Mother Jones has an excellent article on the White House's extensive use of alternative email accounts to avoid the "possibility of lawsuits" (of course, we shouldn't assume that anyone's doing anything wrong!)
Just to be clear though (and you probably know this, but it's not explicit in your post, so just for everyone's information), how White House staff were USING their RNC email accounts may have been wrong, but simply HAVING two sets of emails is pretty much standard, even, some argue, REQUIRED by law.
Politicians can't use their government email for political purposes, and therefore they have separate party email systems for the purpose of politics. If you're sending out an email for a fundraiser, you use your "rnc.com" email. If you're conducting government business, you use your "whitehouse.gov" email. That in itself doesn't seem surprising to me as I work in a university, and so I never use my university email address to communicate with my friends and family, since I don't want my private correspondance to ever get caught up in a Freedom of Information request (universities are now covered by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in Ontario).
That being said, there does seem to be a suggestion that staffers were using their RNC accounts for government business, and it's been suggested this was done INTENTIONALLY so as to inoculate those emails from scrutiny, which would obviously be wrong. I just wanted to point out that "extensive use of alternnative emails accounts" in and of itself is not unusual, (pretty much everyone I know has a hotmail (or gmail or yahoo) account they use for personal email, and another they use for work email) it's HOW the accounts were used that's the issue, not just that there were separate accounts. In the political realm in Canada, I'd imagine Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion and Jack Layton each have one email address they use for government business, and another they use when communicating party business.
I think the "possibility of lawsuits" referred to in the article is staff being told not to use their government email accounts for RNC business because a) that would presumably violate the Hatch Act, and b) it would open up emails about RNC strategizing to the same public scrutiny that GOVERNMENT email is subject to (i.e. access to information lawsuits).
The (big) problem comes if someone decided "if I shouldn't use my government email for partisan communication becuase it opens up my partisan communications to public scrutiny, maybe that means I should use my party email to conduct government business I don't want subjected to public scrutiny" a leap that is obviously unethical, and almost certainly illegal.
Personally, I'm more easily convinced this is all an example of mass incompetance, not a mass conspircay, but either is a pretty damning indictment of the administration.
I thought the Mother Jones acticle raised some interesting questions. Should ALL email by government employees (even hotmail etc...) be open to the same scrutiny? I understand why people shouldn't be able to use commercial email for public business, but there is at least the hint of a suggestion that government workers shouldn't be able to use commercial email period. When the Clinton Manual referred to in the article says the government system must be used for communication to "outside parties" and "no other email is to be used" how far does that go? What can a government worker keep private, and what can't they?
Thanks for the comment. It seems to me that anyone in the government should be required to use correspondance open to potential scrutiny in any communication that could be construed as official. In the cases mentioned in the article, the correspondance was definitely of a political nature--these people weren't calling each other to arrange rides to their kids' soccer match. Of course, anyone in government would love to keep as much as possible secret--all of us do. I'd much rather work in a place where my boss doesn't know what I'm doing and I'm not held accountable for decisions. Since we aren't allowed such freedom, I see little reason to give such freedom to politicians. We, after all, are their bosses: a relationship that has been misconstrued as of late.
2 comments:
Just to be clear though (and you probably know this, but it's not explicit in your post, so just for everyone's information), how White House staff were USING their RNC email accounts may have been wrong, but simply HAVING two sets of emails is pretty much standard, even, some argue, REQUIRED by law.
Politicians can't use their government email for political purposes, and therefore they have separate party email systems for the purpose of politics. If you're sending out an email for a fundraiser, you use your "rnc.com" email. If you're conducting government business, you use your "whitehouse.gov" email. That in itself doesn't seem surprising to me as I work in a university, and so I never use my university email address to communicate with my friends and family, since I don't want my private correspondance to ever get caught up in a Freedom of Information request (universities are now covered by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act in Ontario).
That being said, there does seem to be a suggestion that staffers were using their RNC accounts for government business, and it's been suggested this was done INTENTIONALLY so as to inoculate those emails from scrutiny, which would obviously be wrong. I just wanted to point out that "extensive use of alternnative emails accounts" in and of itself is not unusual, (pretty much everyone I know has a hotmail (or gmail or yahoo) account they use for personal email, and another they use for work email) it's HOW the accounts were used that's the issue, not just that there were separate accounts. In the political realm in Canada, I'd imagine Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion and Jack Layton each have one email address they use for government business, and another they use when communicating party business.
I think the "possibility of lawsuits" referred to in the article is staff being told not to use their government email accounts for RNC business because a) that would presumably violate the Hatch Act, and b) it would open up emails about RNC strategizing to the same public scrutiny that GOVERNMENT email is subject to (i.e. access to information lawsuits).
The (big) problem comes if someone decided "if I shouldn't use my government email for partisan communication becuase it opens up my partisan communications to public scrutiny, maybe that means I should use my party email to conduct government business I don't want subjected to public scrutiny" a leap that is obviously unethical, and almost certainly illegal.
Personally, I'm more easily convinced this is all an example of mass incompetance, not a mass conspircay, but either is a pretty damning indictment of the administration.
I thought the Mother Jones acticle raised some interesting questions. Should ALL email by government employees (even hotmail etc...) be open to the same scrutiny? I understand why people shouldn't be able to use commercial email for public business, but there is at least the hint of a suggestion that government workers shouldn't be able to use commercial email period. When the Clinton Manual referred to in the article says the government system must be used for communication to "outside parties" and "no other email is to be used" how far does that go? What can a government worker keep private, and what can't they?
Thanks for the comment. It seems to me that anyone in the government should be required to use correspondance open to potential scrutiny in any communication that could be construed as official. In the cases mentioned in the article, the correspondance was definitely of a political nature--these people weren't calling each other to arrange rides to their kids' soccer match. Of course, anyone in government would love to keep as much as possible secret--all of us do. I'd much rather work in a place where my boss doesn't know what I'm doing and I'm not held accountable for decisions. Since we aren't allowed such freedom, I see little reason to give such freedom to politicians. We, after all, are their bosses: a relationship that has been misconstrued as of late.
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