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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.'"

10 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. 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
  7. 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...