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You've Got Mail -- Tons Of It

Posted by timothy on from the city-that-reads-remember dept.

Daniel Goldman writes "The Baltimore Sun has an article about the City of Baltimore's email problem." A snippet: "Millions of old e-mail messages are clogging Baltimore's municipal computers, so the city is going to start automatically deleting any messages older than 90 days. A common practice in private business, the move raises questions when made by a municipality, which has a responsibility to retain certain public records." Goldman points out "Just think about all the potential law suits; 'if it's not there, they can't subpoena it.'"

11 of 249 comments (clear)

  1. Simple... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Outsource each employees email to GMail. Problem solved.

    1. Re:Simple... by hype7 · · Score: 3, Funny
      Outsource each employees email to GMail. Problem solved.


      yeah, and if the budget's looking a bit bad for that year, they could always put a few of the email accounts up on ebay.

      -- james
    2. Re:Simple... by stilwebm · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes, but people don't send one page, 100KB Word Documents as attachements to the Evolution mailing list. Secretaries do.

    3. Re:Simple... by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 3, Funny

      I can beat that. A few years ago this bitch at work clogged up the mail system with a 50 mb zip file containing pictures from the corp. picnic. She sent it to every employee in the company.

      Stupid bitch

      --

      Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

  2. Just load them into Google or the Archive by Animats · · Score: 2, Funny

    Either Google or the Internet Archive would be happy to archive that data for the City of Baltimore and keep it available for public reference.

  3. Old e-mail - it's a resource by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm posting anonymously because this may risk my relationship with my employer.

    We see old e-mails as a resource to be harnessed and turned into profit. Thanks to old e-mails we can ensure that no employee leaves with a spotless record since everyone always e-mails something incriminating sooner or later from the company e-mail address.

    We also find that the e-mails are great for data repositories; we fill all of our databases with text and when our clients come in, we tell them that those data warehouses contain terabytes of information.

  4. Re:Why not... by AvantLegion · · Score: 4, Funny
    Maybe just figure out what percentage is spam, and delete that percentage of mail. Ehh, that was probably the right 30% to delete....

  5. Re:And there are no privacy concerns? by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 3, Funny

    The question comes -- should all of it be public?

    They are public records. So, yes it should all be public.

    Simple, no?

    --
    If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
  6. Re:A mark or procedure for official business by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    1. All people are honest and therefore this is a great idea. Only companies like Microsoft, Enron, AOL, CA, and the entire mutual fund industry are stupid enough to communicate incriminating information via email.

    2. History has proved again again that people are very very good at figuring out what information will be important to the future.

    3. All we need do is train people. Once trained no one will ever make a mistake.

  7. Outsourcing garbage collection... by mikael · · Score: 3, Funny

    When I heard my city were outsourcing their garbage collection services, I imagined office blocks of staff in India sifting through online hex editors looking for spare memory blocks to delete.

    --
    Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
  8. Re:incremental backup by surprise_audit · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just print the damn things out and file them. Anyone who wants to subpoena them had better have a fleet of trucks and hundreds of spare staff...