White House Wins Ruling On E-mail Records

An anonymous reader writes "The White House Office of Administration is not required to turn over records about a trove of possibly missing e-mails, a federal judge ruled Monday. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found the agency does not have 'substantial independent authority,' so it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act."

Comments

When did this change?

[Hyppy]

IANAL, but I'm still surprised to hear that the FOIA only applies to government offices which have "substantial independent authority."

From everything I've heard, it applies to all government agencies. Does this mean if a government office can make itself appear harmless enough, it doesn't have to cooperate?

"Sorry, I'm only the FBI director's SECRETARY. I don't have substantial independent authority."

Re:When did this change?

[Anonymous Coward]

And so how do the people of the United States get open access to the records of the "Executive Office"?

Plus, didn't the White House -- ahem, "Executive Office" unit -- lose all the relevant emails in a catastrophic data loss event during an upgrade to a mainstream commercial email server system?

And, if the emails were lost, why did the judge who formerly ruled in Microsoft's favor (after being appointed to her position by George Bush) bother ruling on this matter.

I mean, the White House lost the emails, so why does it matter if the people of the United States would like to see what their government is up to or not?

In case you are missing the context here

[MarkusQ]

In case you are missing the context here, the emails in question are interesting for a whole slew of reasons. The probably contain evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors (most likely by Cheney, but who knows) and pretty much have to contain evidence of perjury (with the morass of statements that have been made under oath, someone is surely lying, we just don't know who). And them there's the Hacth act violations, the Abrimoff issues, the election tampering, and on and on.

These are the missing 18 minutes gone gonzo,

--MarkusQ

Re:The Microsoft connection

[freenix]

Select, Right-Click, Wikipedia search. She did screw up Penfield's work on the M$ trial. She should have refused because Penfield was the only person who could have know enough to judge the case. More to the point, she just reversed an October 2007 ruling about Presidential documents.

On October 1, 2007, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly reversed George W. Bush on archive secrecy, (38-page) ruling that the U.S. Archivist's reliance on the executive order to delay release of the papers of former presidents is "arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accordance with law." National Security Archives, at George Washington University alleged that the Bush order severely slowed or prevented the release of historic presidential papers.

Involvement with FISA should disbar anyone - the court violates the 4th amendment by being a secret court.

Re:Judge Kollar-Kotelly is a Fascist

[Doc Ruby]

I am. Almost as mad as I am for his appointing Republican senator William Cohen as his Defense Secretary (1997-2001), who dismissed Wesley Clark from commanding NATO (apparently for winning the Kosovo War without any US casualties). Which gave us the Pentagon that backed Bush every step of the way lying us into the Iraq War, while letting Binladen go (despite Clinton forcing Cohen's Pentagon to bomb Binladen's bases).

Aren't you mad about all that too?

Re:Cue the Bush bashing

[cmacb]

That's entirely irrelevant. I don't really care what party it is, if the Democrats were in this situation they would be scrutinized just as much as the current administration is.

I wish that were true, but I worked for a company involved with White House e-mail being screwed up when Clinton was still in office. It made the news, then the story died a normal death (typical government screw-up) just like the now routine stories of sensitive information being lost on laptops, they don't even bother to report all of those these days.

My guess is that these earlier e-mail screw ups were partially responsible for the decision to move from Lotus Notes to MS Exchange. It would seem that this transition has been a disaster.

Never ascribe to malice what can be more easily blamed on incompetence. Or something like that.

But know that the media has biases, and they quite frequently bury a story earlier if it adversely affects someone or something they like. I won't go so far as to say they universally favor one party or another, but I think if you pay close attention you will see a pattern.

Tell the judge what you think!

[Freymour]

I'm outraged; googled the Judge and called her office in Washington DC.

Re:Wrong way around

[colmore]

Here's the thing that apologists for the administration's abuses of power never seemed to get:

The gained authority of the whitehouse is going to carry over to the administration of the next pinko commie liberal that gets elected. You've screwed yourselves.

Publicise this in KY and wreck his career.

[plasmacutter]

Publicise this despicable action and watch bunning struggle to find a job mopping floors in his local elementary school.

Three Branches

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're just voting, you get to decide who gets to write the check. If you fight your ticket, or a bad law, you make the law that much more expensive to fight. If a full 1% of the people who get tickets actually fought them, tooth and nail, it's gonna get pretty damn expensive to enforce the law.

Now when you play with the executive branch, you get to see a lot more of what is going on. Congress passes a law and delegates authority to say, the Secretary of the Treasury. The secretary determines how to enforce the law and proposes a regulation. The regulation then is reviewed by *us*, and we send our comments in. The secretary must take our comments into consideration when promulgating a regulation.

Guess who sends in those comments and hangs out at the hearings for the regulations? Us? Nope. We're too busy working our tail off for that big house in PV. Corporations with their paid shills are there, giving testimony and making suggestions about how everyone would benefit if the regulation were written their way.

Unfortunately, the name of the game is to know the rules and use them. If they don't suit you, buy new rules.

Oh, and don't forget that if you don't know how an agency operates, you can get their organization and staffing manuals and their procedure manuals - if they are subject to FOIA.

What would our country be like with a large army of people making FOIA requests?

Every kid should know this stuff before they leave high school!!!

There. I'm done.

Re:Wrong way around

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think Obama or McCain will repeal this? it will just save there butt when they take even more of the citizens rights away. Ever heard of the McCain-Feingold act, or possibly the "hate speech" bill supported by Obama. Both are just different acts to limit free speech. Either way McCain and Obama are just two sides of the same coin. What either will do is take more rights from citizens and tell us it is for our own good. What they will not do is repeal this act or the so called "patriot act". Either way they will both redistribute wealth and build bigger government with more control. Unfortunately we the American people are getting shafted.

Come November I am personally voting for the Constitution Party candidate by the name of Charles Baldwin even if it doesn't matter much it will at least ease my conscience by voting for a good candidate, in my opinion, as opposed to the lesser of two evils.