Gainesville, Florida, put its internal emails online with few limits(montgomeryadvertiser.com)
montgomeryadvertiser.com
Gainesville, Florida, put its internal emails online with few limits
https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/local/solutions-journalism/2019/09/05/gainesville-florida-put-its-internal-emails-online-making-residents-angry-frustrating-journalists/2196171001/
11 comments
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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?
I believe that YouTube's algorithm can exacerbate mental health issues. Watching too much dark or otherwise unsettling material can absolutely lead to a downward mental health spiral for some people.
After many years of dealing with mental health issues, I am constantly monitoring the effect that my behaviors and activities are having on my mental state. I have personally experienced watching YouTube contribute to a decline in my mental health.
I've developed a few strategies for mitigating this:
First off, I monitor my urges and behavior for warning signs. If I find myself drawn to dark or unsettling things, I try to determine the contributing factors. Often, I come up with things going on in my life or unmet needs that are likely contributing factors which I can then work on addressing, or at the very least acknowledging.
Second, I only watch YouTube videos via the web interface while not logged in to a google account, with cookies being discarded at the end of the browsing session via incognito mode or a temporary browser profile. This helps ensure that any darkness I stumble into doesn't follow me around and drag me down. It does result in YouTube's recommendations being useless, but useless > harmful IMO.
Take care of yourself. This pandemic is not only going to be hard on physical health. My email is in my profile if you ever wanna chat about anything at all.
After many years of dealing with mental health issues, I am constantly monitoring the effect that my behaviors and activities are having on my mental state. I have personally experienced watching YouTube contribute to a decline in my mental health.
I've developed a few strategies for mitigating this:
First off, I monitor my urges and behavior for warning signs. If I find myself drawn to dark or unsettling things, I try to determine the contributing factors. Often, I come up with things going on in my life or unmet needs that are likely contributing factors which I can then work on addressing, or at the very least acknowledging.
Second, I only watch YouTube videos via the web interface while not logged in to a google account, with cookies being discarded at the end of the browsing session via incognito mode or a temporary browser profile. This helps ensure that any darkness I stumble into doesn't follow me around and drag me down. It does result in YouTube's recommendations being useless, but useless > harmful IMO.
Take care of yourself. This pandemic is not only going to be hard on physical health. My email is in my profile if you ever wanna chat about anything at all.
Thanks, yeah I feel depression is more of a symptom that something is wrong in your life, but I guess for some people even if you gave them a million dollars, they still wouldn't be happy. There are problems in this world (both inside and outside the US) that's bigger than me, along with other things that bother me but I guess not much control over that, so I find myself focusing on something else to distract me.
I use a Chrome Extension Distraction Free YouTube, even non-depressing topics it gets distracting like tech or gaming stuff. I try to use YouTube mostly to look up a topic I'm interested in like programming or tech talks, etc but some people I like their vlogs so I hit the bell button and have Gmail auto-apply a label...
I wish though services had a way to turn off things like related videos, etc though or some settings to show only if you reveal it - not sure the best idea from UX. Same with Quora or any other type of site, curious about something and then related questions distract. I guess they design them to be addicted and time sucks though, since more time you spend in the site it benefits their metrics and ad revenue.
I've been toying around with a product idea I have in my head but still super early but since I'm a fan of the freemium model and hopes to sell services/digital products on the platform, advertising or related content wouldn't be as important since I'd hope to actually have a thing of value to charge for, however, I feel ads if done tastefully and related content can add value, and maybe you're bored and want to find something to do... but if you use the platforms for both fun and education or work that can be distracting. Not sure if many platforms have attempted to tackle that problem much though.
I guess though doing less of these things that platforms do or give people more controls, probably would tick off your VC firm or shareholders as they'd see money being left on the table even if you were still profitable without it. Then there's dark patterns too. Like some game on my iPhone, is having a sale and as soon as I open it pops up a screen to buy gems, which is great way to get someone to accidentally spend their money I think. If I want to buy gems, I'll click the button myself... Actually very temped to uninstall it just for that reason.
I use a Chrome Extension Distraction Free YouTube, even non-depressing topics it gets distracting like tech or gaming stuff. I try to use YouTube mostly to look up a topic I'm interested in like programming or tech talks, etc but some people I like their vlogs so I hit the bell button and have Gmail auto-apply a label...
I wish though services had a way to turn off things like related videos, etc though or some settings to show only if you reveal it - not sure the best idea from UX. Same with Quora or any other type of site, curious about something and then related questions distract. I guess they design them to be addicted and time sucks though, since more time you spend in the site it benefits their metrics and ad revenue.
I've been toying around with a product idea I have in my head but still super early but since I'm a fan of the freemium model and hopes to sell services/digital products on the platform, advertising or related content wouldn't be as important since I'd hope to actually have a thing of value to charge for, however, I feel ads if done tastefully and related content can add value, and maybe you're bored and want to find something to do... but if you use the platforms for both fun and education or work that can be distracting. Not sure if many platforms have attempted to tackle that problem much though.
I guess though doing less of these things that platforms do or give people more controls, probably would tick off your VC firm or shareholders as they'd see money being left on the table even if you were still profitable without it. Then there's dark patterns too. Like some game on my iPhone, is having a sale and as soon as I open it pops up a screen to buy gems, which is great way to get someone to accidentally spend their money I think. If I want to buy gems, I'll click the button myself... Actually very temped to uninstall it just for that reason.
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.
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.
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?
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/coronavir...
3) https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200330/United-States-tra...
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/coronavir...
3) https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200330/United-States-tra...
Sweden is not using smartphone or base station location data for tracking of Corona.
https://www.datainspektionen.se/nyheter/coronaviruset-och-di...
https://www.datainspektionen.se/nyheter/coronaviruset-och-di...
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.
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.
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
This sounds all pro to me.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Florida government websites do have these warnings, as well as in email auto responders.
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.
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.
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.
People might even make hyperbolic assumptions about the future while preying on uncertainty.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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?
If I'm not mistaken, Gmail _also_ keeps a record of your emails too, does it not?
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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.
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.
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...
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.
Just use your Mayor's private email server. They'll be sure to acid wash the drives when they leave office.
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.
What is the matter with losing a little bit of privacy? You have nothing to hide, don't you? /s
Even if Sweden doesn't have a webpage for this, anyone can request anything
https://www.government.se/emails-to-the-government-and-minis...