Boston City Government Discovers Email Retention

An anonymous reader writes "The Boston Globe, covering a battle to unseat the 16-year incumbent mayor, has found out that the city has no email retention policy. A city official who receives hundreds of emails a day was found to have only 18 emails in his mailbox. The city has enabled journaling on its Exchange server in response. The Globe also notes that they had to curtail requests for emails under the Open Records law because for each mailbox, 'City officials estimated they would charge $5,000 for six months worth of email.'"

Comments

No retention?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, but.. are they obliged to have a policy?

Re:No retention?

[laughingcoyote]

Yes, I know where I am, but if you'd RTFA:

According to the Massachusetts secretary of state, the state public records law requires municipal employees to save electronic correspondence for at least two years, even if the contents are of "no informational or evidential value." The only e-mails that can be deleted are those containing completely inconsequential information, such as spam or questions about lunch orders.

Re:No retention?

[Martin Blank]

In the county government (not in Massachusetts) where I work, there is no standard policy. A draft policy was circulated not long ago that would mandate a standard retention policy of 90 days. Some agencies have different policies by law (child support must hold onto e-mail for I think five years, and the district attorney and public defender's offices must keep case-related e-mail in perpetuity), but the 90-day cap was allegedly intended to balance discovery and e-mail storage requirements. Part of the policy suggested that PSTs, forwarding to other e-mail accounts, and saving messages locally should be disabled; the response from one agency was that they should prepare to start spending more on printers, because a lot of material was going to end up in hard copy, especially for those of us working on projects that can take as much as three years to complete. AFAICT, no IT staff were consulted before the draft was written.

Re:No retention?

[Smooth and Shiny]

Being from Massachusetts myself, I can tell you that Tom "Mumbles" Menino likes to run a tight ship. When someone who works in his office is found to have voted against him, they are fired. It's happened to people who've been working in the Mayor's Office for as long as 20 years. He's a scumbag and needs to seriously get out of the job of ru(in)ning the city.

Thing that gets me is... every re-election, all of Boston's firefighters would throw their weight behind him in support of his bid to run again (despite his promise to only hold office for 4 years when he first ran) and always help him get elected again. Then he does the same thing to them; breaks the promise of newer and better contracts for those brave men and women who fight fires. This year, however, they've apparently woken up and are supporting challengers.

Re:No retention?

[mantis2009]

Working in archives as a historian in the past five years, I can tell you that email retention is just the tip of the iceburg. Many, many times I spoke with officials who told me that all of the "old" files I needed were "on the website." I was looking for files and forms produced in the 1990s and 2000s. Very frequently, the files were not "on the website" where they should have been. They were overwritten, or lost in a website redesign, or they were never online to begin with. Sometimes, I could find the file I wanted by using the Internet Archive, but more often, the files were simply lost.
I think the period between 1995 and 2015 will be remembered as a dark age for recordkeeping of all kinds.

Re:No retention?

[blitzkrieg3]

According to the Massachusetts secretary of state, the state public records law requires municipal employees to save electronic correspondence for at least two years, even if the contents are of "no informational or evidential value." The only e-mails that can be deleted are those containing completely inconsequential information, such as spam or questions about lunch orders.

So what? It shouldn't be left up to the end user to decide whether the email should be retained or not. Who's to say that a message titled, "Here's the $20k bribe for the big dig contract" doesn't contain spam or other "completely inconsequential information"?

Re:No retention?

[ColdWetDog]

I think the period between 1995 and 2015 will be remembered as a dark age for recordkeeping of all kinds.

Are you kidding? Between Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Bog Knows What Else, there is so much crap out there that historians will spend lifetimes perusing through 'information'.

And the best part about it is that you don't have to be stuck in some drafty basement near the "Beware of Leopard" sign. You can do all of your 'research' in the comfort of Starbucks or whatever wifi connected place your heart desires. The volume of information will dwarf what the generations before had to work with. Nearly unlimited bytes of data. A field day.

Oh, you wanted useful stuff. Sorry. My bad.

Re:No retention?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like, "Would you like twenty thousand dollar dressing with your Big Dig salad this Friday for lunch?"

Re:No retention?

[mabhatter654]

must be nice to live in a world without SOX!!

At corporations, ALL non-spam email must be kept for every employee... even the delete stuff for a certain period of time BY LAW. Spam is usually an exception because it's deleted by an automated process BEFORE the end user sees it... hence no action was ever taking on it. Everything else must be retained for 2,7,10, or more years.

Re:No retention?

[mantis2009]

I'm not convinced that all the data stored on social media will be around in 10 years time, much less 5 years. Look at the track record: Geocities is being deleted as we speak. Does Friendster have data from 2004 still archived and ready for viewing in 2014? How many thousands of Myspace profiles from early 2009 are already gone? Data on the internet is inherently temporary. I think maybe a decade from now we'll have accepted this problem and worked out some kind of new data retention solution. Until then, we're throwing away all sorts of records that we used to keep.

Re:No retention?

[mabhatter654]

it's not about IT staff it's about what the business and lawyers need.. sorry. At my company we had a 90 day retention for email inboxes and after that it had to be filed in "retention" folders with the purpose marked or in the case of sales, they probably printed the materials out and put it in a physical file folder for contract purposes.

The 90 day camp is cute and common because people think by deleting everything they're spared discovery/FIOA requests.. but that's very not true. If a project takes 3 years then the entire correspondence must be kept for the 3 years, plus the historical period after the project is done. Electronic cleanup doesn't exempt you from discovery or FIOA requests for information you are obligated to keep. Filing stuff in paper means that a clever lawyer can compel the court to shut you down while they dig through your file cabinets for information..and it automatically puts you in contempt-of-court should a judge order 91 day old emails produced (like what's going with Apple vs. Pystar)

Re:No retention?

[mabhatter654]

And when facebook closes down in 2014? They have no retention policy, they have no open file formats for exporting to archivists.... when they go bankrupt and the power company turns out the lights that information's just gone. Poof.

It's all electronic and there are no mandates to keep information in useful formats. If they're following Google's model then they don't even keep "backup" tapes they just keep information in three or more redundant parts of their cluster when one box fails they trash it and install a new node that rebuilds. When the bills stop being paid and the system is farmed out for scrap pieces those RAIDS full of data are totally useless.

Re:No retention?

[Runaway1956]

No one ever said that a firefighter had to be smart. All that is required is that he is ballsy, understands how fires work, how to control fires, and is able and willing to obey orders.

I speak as a graduate of the U.S. Navy's finest fire fighting training. ;^)

Re:No retention?

[Khyber]

You also need to be certified as a First Responder, because quite often you're the first on the scene and that means you're the first to provide medical support.

So, yes, firefighters DO need to be smart. Go figure such an ignorant statement would come from somewhere in the Navy.

Re:No retention?

[Runaway1956]

Excuse me - I was certified as an EMT in 1980. Again, you don't need to be exceedingly smart to be an EMT. A certain APTITUDE is required, and moderate intelligence, but not enough to qualify as particularly "smart".

Go blow smoke somewhere else, alright?

Re:No retention?

[bitt3n]

No one ever said that a firefighter had to be smart. All that is required is that he is ballsy, understands how fires work, how to control fires, and is able and willing to obey orders.

I speak as a graduate of the U.S. Navy's finest fire fighting training. ;^)

With all due respect, Navy firefighters have it easy. All you need to put out the fire is a corkscrew long enough to bore through the hull.

Re:No retention?

[Quothz]

You also need to be certified as a First Responder, because quite often you're the first on the scene and that means you're the first to provide medical support. So, yes, firefighters DO need to be smart.

The ability to take training does not imply "smart", at least not in the way I understand the word. In my experience, the average firefighter is just about average in intelligence, or perhaps slightly above-average. A few are very smart, and a few are dumber'n rocks. This seems t'be true in virtually every profession that isn't pure manual labor but doesn't require much in the way of critical thinking.

Re:No retention?

[darth dickinson]

Yeah... haven't you heard? Laws are for the "little people", not for the all-knowing, all-caring Government.

Re:No retention?

[laughingcoyote]

Generally speaking, employees shouldn't be able to delete email or other communication period. They should be able to remove it from their personal inbox, to prevent clutter, but SOX retention should be getting handled at the server level. Employees shouldn't be handling their own data retention at all.

Re:No retention?

[Runaway1956]

ROFLMAO - good one.

Problem is, when I've sunk my home, my working space, my battle station, my EVERYTHING, where do I put my sorry dumb ass? Oooops!

I'll admit that maybe we do have it easier than civilian firefighters. We drill, and we drill, and we drill. With all the practice, directed by sadistic SOB's in officer's uniforms, there isn't a square inch of the ship that we aren't intimate with. A dozen men on each team with that sort of training means we can handle a lot of stuff that a civilian would walk away from.

But, again, where would we walk to?

Re:No retention?

[ColdWetDog]

When the bills stop being paid and the system is farmed out for scrap pieces those RAIDS full of data are totally useless.

You said it like it's a bad thing...

Re:No retention?

[Anonymous Coward]

Last I checked, we have secret ballots in the USA, thus, there is no way to prove how you voted. If your boss tells you "Vote for X or you're fired", you can simply say you voted for X. Even if your boss tells you to sneak a picture of your ballot with a camera phone, it would be quite easy to vote for X, ask the poll worked to spoil the ballot since you made a mistake, and vote a fresh ballot. Or just print a sample ballot and take a picture of a voting booth mock-up in your kitchen.

Now, there is one way a boss can enforce voting: every employee is required to request an absentee ballot, then hand over the entire absentee ballot kit, with the affidavit signed. The boss would fill out everyone's ballots and mail them in.

Needless to say, any place with a newspaper worth its salt would blow this to pieces, not to mention that said boss would have an extremely difficult time finding people willing to work for him/her.

Re:No retention?

[Timex]

Ummm.... No. If you did that, you would flood the ship, sinking it. It may not be as big a deal if you're moored to the pier, but if you're at sea, that would be Bad News indeed.

There are some similarities between shipboard firefighting and fighting a house fire, but on shore, firefighters generally don't have to worry about flooding the only thing between them and a very long swim (or worse).

Re:No retention?

[Timex]

Because of this sort of training, I knew my way around Spru-cans pretty well. You forgot to mention that there are parts of our "home" that we KNOW are hazerdous for any number of reasons, even more so if they are flooded or on fire.

We have to know how to handle different classes of fires AND how to get them under control quickly, without endangering the rest of the ship.

Submariners have other problems to deal with too.

Re:No retention?

[good soldier svejk]

Publicly traded corporations. I work at a 10,000 employee company not covered under SarbOx.

Re:No retention?

[Khyber]

You need to be smart enough to not accidentally kill a person - that's a lot more intelligent than 80% of the population, in case your eyes have been welded shut the past three decades.

Re:No retention?

[pete6677]

Jesus Christ, have you ever heard of a joke?

Re:No retention?

[Runaway1956]

Most of that 80% of the population that is likely to kill a patient is likely to do so out of ignorance - not stupidity.

The most likely scenario for killing your own patient is carelessly moving a patient who has a spinal injury. Given one short semester in a classroom, all but the stupidest can be trained to recognize patients at risk of spinal injury, AND trained to move those patients relatively safely.

Again - I say that high intelligence is NOT required of either a firefighter, or a first responder/EMT.

I wonder how many people of average or even below average intelligence are scared away from these professions by people who assume that high intelligence is required? Granted, an idiot is going to be worthless - no, worse than worthless - in these fields. But, a high IQ is NOT a necessity.

Just average people who can safely operate motor vehicles, handle firearms, cook, and care for children are smart enough to become EMT's, and even nurses and paramedics. Or, firefighters. Or, even cops.

I mean, it isn't like an EMT has to INVENT a procedure or method to save a life. He only needs to apply methods and procedures that other people have invented, and passed on to him, through training. The motor head who can tune his own car up has the intelligence to kickstart a heart - if someone just shows him how, and he cares enough to pay attention.

Re:No retention?

[blueskies]

You need to be smart enough to not accidentally kill a person

Wow. That really is smart!!

Re:No retention?

[Anonymous Coward]

You accidentally kill someone, you just leave them behind so that all the evidence is removed...

Re:No retention?

[YouWantFriesWithThat]

Spam is usually [...] deleted by an automated process BEFORE the end user sees it

holy hell, i have heard of this mythical land but i never knew it to be true!

Re:No retention?

[KayElle]

I'm an actual municipal IT critter in Mass, though from a teeny tiny town that barely warrants the one full time IT position I fill. It would be great if the Sec of State could cite this two year rule somewhere in the Mass General Laws or his office's edicts on email retention because all previous guidance from the state has been that email follows the same retention requirements as other documents, which generally means that only official materials like a meeting agenda need to be retained. (The state's guidance also clearly indicated that any retained emails need to be printed out and not retained as email.) The last guidance I saw was also that email was a format, not a document type. You based retention on what was in the contents of the email, not on the basis of it being an email. The other side of that is that almost any sort of actual policy communication in email is not allowed at all because if a majority of committee members communicate in email or any other online format, it constitutes a meeting subject to open meeting laws which means it needs to be formally posted ahead of time. That formal posting, signed by a committee secretary and stamped by the town clerk would be an example of an official document that would have to be retained. But requiring a physical signature guarantees that it isn't applicable to email.

Re:No retention?

[mabhatter654]

But any non-trivial employees is dealing with multiple types of email. My boss may deal with contracts for purchasing software such as terms and conditions and those are mostly sent via email now days. You may have HR reports under a different retention. You may have environmental/insurance/osha reporting forms that you need to keep record of emailing to the appropriate officers, etc. Some things have to be kept for 5 years, some "forever".

You are correct that the server handles the actual retention but the user still has to file/identify it appropriately in the first place or it gets the "default" treatment.. which could cause problems.

Important emails

[NoYob]

Alarmed by the deletion of e-mails that could have contained potentially significant information, administration officials recently instituted a new electronic document retention policy and temporary âoejournalingâ(TM)â(TM) program, to keep copies of every e-mail sent and received by every city employee.

Considering all the news about politicians and their "extracurricular activities", I just had this image of a bunch of emails that were sent and received from escorts and 20 something year old girlfriends or boyfriends. Meaning, they are hiding something and that's why they're deleting them.

Yes, I am very cynical when it comes to politicians.

Re:Important emails

[IonOtter]

Actually, it was probably a bunch of PianoCat videos, 9/11 tribute chain letters and Obama-llama hate mail.

Re:Important emails

[NotBornYesterday]

Massachusetts has a remarkably good record of producing top-notch crooks in our political ecosystem. It is not surprising that they evolved far enough to realize that email is not their friend in court.

setenv $EMAIL_STORAGE = /dev/null; export $EMAIL_STORAGE

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not just politicians. Where I used to work, a disgruntled IT person forwarded emails between an "escort" and a company director to all 6000 company employees. jpg attachments and all.

Re:Important emails

[geekmux]

Its not just politicians. Where I used to work, a disgruntled IT person forwarded emails between an "escort" and a company director to all 6000 company employees. jpg attachments and all.

Could be a new reality show. "When IT Attacks"

Hey, c'mon now, if "The Office" can make it...

Re:Important emails

[McDutchie]

That is the weirdest mix of sh and csh syntax I've ever seen.

Re:Important emails

[lysergic.acid]

You know, if it were just prostitution and extramarital affairs, I wouldn't care if their emails were deleted. Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant. I know that the Republicans saw it as a huge victory when Clinton was impeached basically for having an extramarital affair (and don't tell me that it was for perjury; it was his personal life that was on trial), but, in the grand scheme of things, personal infidelity is probably not the biggest "crime" a public official can commit. I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public, but happens to be a philander, over a president who is completely devoted to his wife, but is willing to step on civil liberties, support torture, or sell out the American public to corporate interests. Likewise, I'm much less concerned about a president who lies about his private life than one who lies about justifications for war.

So, no, I'm not particularly concerned about politicians hiding emails to their girlfriends/boyfriends. We should be so lucky if that's all they were hiding. It's more the potential bribes, nepotism/cronyism, and backroom deals that I'm worried about. Those are the type of things that actually conflict with good governance—in other words, government corruption.

Re:Important emails

[houstonbofh]

Its not just politicians. Where I used to work, a disgruntled IT person forwarded emails between an "escort" and a company director to all 6000 company employees. jpg attachments and all.

Could be a new reality show. "When IT Attacks"

Hey, c'mon now, if "The Office" can make it...

Or Salmon Days! Wait a minute...

Re:Important emails

[houstonbofh]

You know, if it were just prostitution and extramarital affairs, I wouldn't care if their emails were deleted. Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant.

It is a question of trust. If they will not keep their word to a person they have pledged their life to, and who is (or should be) the closest to them in the world, then they may be lying to me too...

That said, I don't really trust a damn one of them...

Re:Important emails

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

There's a sh syntax?! I just thought the developers all suffered from dyslexia.

Re:Important emails

[selven]

to a person they have pledged their life to

The statistics disagree with you:

50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce ( http://www.divorcerate.org/ )
Average length of a marriage is 8 years ( http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-97.pdf )

Re:Important emails

[nomadic]

I know that the Republicans saw it as a huge victory when Clinton was impeached basically for having an extramarital affair (and don't tell me that it was for perjury; it was his personal life that was on trial),

I actually think the Republicans had a legitimate complaint about the lying-under-oath part; Clinton did effectively perjur himself. Of course, the series of investigations that put him into that position were completely frivolous. And I say that as someone who still thinks Clinton was one of the best presidents we've ever had (with Bush being the worst. Ever.)

Re:Important emails

[NotBornYesterday]

Oh, so that's what my scripts won't run.

Yeah, I was feeling a little nostalgic for csh, which is ironic, considering I hardly ever used it and couldn't remember much syntax. I and wasn't about to refresh my memory for the sake of making a funny, so I fudged it.

Re:Important emails

[houstonbofh]

to a person they have pledged their life to

The statistics disagree with you: 50% percent of first marriages, 67% of second and 74% of third marriages end in divorce ( http://www.divorcerate.org/ ) Average length of a marriage is 8 years ( http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/p70-97.pdf )

You just made my point. You pledge "Until Death do us part" but some just don't keep that pledge. And of those that have already proven not to keep that pledge, they are more likely not to again...

Re:Important emails

[lysergic.acid]

I'm not saying that it's not a reflection on their personal character. Sure, if I could choose a president who represented the interest of the people and was a good family man, then I would. But given the selection available to us, I'd settle for just the first criteria. And if we're placing our politicians under public scrutiny (as we should), the focus should be on how they're fulfilling their public duty or any potential criminal conduct, not on personal matters which have no bearing on their role as a civil servant.

For instance, I think littering is a despicable behavior and shows laziness and a lack of consideration for others. However, I wouldn't waste tax dollars to impeach a public official for littering. It's just not worth the resources when there are much bigger problems that need addressing. I would even go so far as to say that such an impeachment proceeding is a distraction from the real issues, like bad public policies, or serious corruption.

Re:Important emails

[Jay Clay]

Actually, no he didn't. Perjury has two key parts: (1) lying under oath - the one you're talking about, and (2) the lie affects the outcome of the case. While he did lie under oath, it didn't affect the outcome of the case.

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark Sanford made a big deal about being a "cheap" guy who slept on a cot in his office when he was in Washington DC. The implication was that he was frugal with taxpayer's money, too. But it turns out he regularly flew business class on the taxpayer's dime and on trips he shouldn't have been taking, to Buenos Aires for instance. I think this is relevant because he was the one who made a big deal about being "cheap", it was supposedly part of his philosophy of governance. It's part of what got him elected in the first place.

Re:Important emails

[b4dc0d3r]

Oh, so that's what my scripts won't run.

That is the weirdest mix of English and Englicsh syntax I've ever seen.

Re:Important emails

[lysergic.acid]

I think they ultimately did have legal grounds to impeach him. So the act of impeachment was not illegal. But they basically got him on a technicality.

It's like if you outed a gay public official during a time of homophobic public sentiments and bring him to trial for that. He knows that if he admits to being gay, his political career is over. And with all the media attention, attacks on his personal character, extra public scrutiny, etc., he lies under oath about being gay. So you find proof that he is gay and get him on perjury. Sure, you impeached him on legal grounds, but there were no grounds to place his sexual preference on trial in the first place, and he did nothing wrong to begin with.

Re:Important emails

[mabhatter654]

Glad you believe that but it's distraction by the "right". Rather than address issues like relaxing reporting requirements for banks and investment firms for 20 years, rather than discuss the merits of continual corporate buyouts and the affect of corporate raiders on long term manufacturing base (oh wait, the fat cats got their money and we lost?) we worry about if the President diddled the secretary.

where was our moral outrage at heads of investment banks that needed to be bailed out... but their "private" citizens so it didn't matter? Where was Congressional outrage on their lavish lifestyles that lasted more than 5 minutes? People that read the Bible are blessed with being Rich... and if you don't live "morally" you deserve to be Poor... and Poor are poor because their immoral or not moral enough to be rich... that's the US believe system in a nutshell.

Re:Important emails

[mabhatter654]

That's where Bush and Cheney won in spades because they kept their dealings as "executive rights" so nobody could get them in court to answer for things like Gitmo...they simply refused the summons and fired any DoJ officers that pushed them. They also used "executive privilege" to get out of several other related cases for them and their buddies. It was hilarious when a Republican President had to deal with Democrat controlled Congress "after Clinton" and the Democrats went out of their way to prove they weren't nasty, even when they had the President dead to rights for ACTUAL impeachment obstructing justice in the spying case and gitmo. BushCo benefited from the "but Clinton" defense in spades the last 2 years.

Obama really needs to issue an executive order to lock them (and their families, aids, hairdressers, etc) up until we get answers to some of those questions... after all the President has that right now and there's empty space in Gitmo soon for new political prisoners!

Re:Important emails

[nbauman]

in the grand scheme of things, personal infidelity is probably not the biggest "crime" a public official can commit.

Like Eliot Spitzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer After Spitzer was forced out, he was replaced by David Patterson, a nice guy, whose main virtue was his ability to get along with the Republicans, who promptly paid him back by throwing the New York State legislature into chaos http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/11/ny Tom Robbins said in the Village Voice that the exercise was paid for by billionaire Tom Golisano after Spitzer wouldn't agree to cut state taxes for billionaires. http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-07-01/columns/senate-coup-plotters-hidden-agenda/

Spitzer's name was exposed during a supposedly confidential investigation by Republican federal prosecutors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Siegelman As it turned out, they didn't have evidence of a crime to charge him with.

The supposed victim of this affair, Spitzer's wife, didn't want him to resign. Why should she? What good does it do her to have her husband lose his job?

I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public, but happens to be a philander, over a president who is completely devoted to his wife, but is willing to step on civil liberties, support torture, or sell out the American public to corporate interests.

Well the way the Republicans get away with destroying civil liberties, supporting torture, and selling the American public out to corporate interests is by distracting voters with sex scandals.

What amazes me is that supposedly intelligent people, like New York Times columnists, let the Republicans put this over on them twice (with Clinton and again with Spitzer). It's hard to believe that they're so stupid. I wonder if there's another reason.

Spitzer was a victim, BTW, of the indiscriminate financial reporting laws which give the attorney generals indiscriminate power to go after anyone they want, including the other party. The only consolation is that Spitzer played this game himself, so there is a defense of of being hoisted on his own petard.

Re:Important emails

[lysergic.acid]

That's an interesting point. I actually wasn't aware of that second requirement. In that case I think even a president (or governor) has some basic right to privacy (e.g. a reporter can't install spy cameras in the President's bathroom or bedroom just because he's a public figure), which justifies his not answering honestly about questions prying into his personal life—and that will go into public records.

I mean, he did a stupid thing to lie, as that turned even many democrats against him. But the entire proceedings seemed like a witch hunt.

Re:Important emails

[mpe]

You know, if it were just prostitution and extramarital affairs, I wouldn't care if their emails were deleted. Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant. I know that the Republicans saw it as a huge victory when Clinton was impeached basically for having an extramarital affair (and don't tell me that it was for perjury; it was his personal life that was on trial), but, in the grand scheme of things, personal infidelity is probably not the biggest "crime" a public official can commit. I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public, but happens to be a philander, over a president who is completely devoted to his wife, but is willing to step on civil liberties, support torture, or sell out the American public to corporate interests.

Or even to the interests of one or more foreign countries. Why should the President have to be married in the first place? Maybe his or her private life should be well private.

So, no, I'm not particularly concerned about politicians hiding emails to their girlfriends/boyfriends.

Though prostitutes on "expenses" is a different problem.

We should be so lucky if that's all they were hiding. It's more the potential bribes, nepotism/cronyism, and backroom deals that I'm worried about. Those are the type of things that actually conflict with good governance--in other words, government corruption.

Maybe a government made up entirely of single promiscuious bisexuals would be less corrupt... It's hard to see how it could possibly be more corrupt than some we have now.

Re:Important emails

[Dare nMc]

Some times it matters, I didn't care about Michael Duvall getting caught bragging about his indiscretions with some young thing in front of a open mike (even him being some family values republican). Until that some young thing is a lobbyist, we don't need another loophole where it is now OK to pay for the guys piece of ass, as long as that isn't her only job...

Re:Important emails

[Bigjeff5]

Just going by the Wikipedia definition, mind you, but according to it the matter simply needs to be material to the judicial proceeding. I.e. lying about your age is not perjury, unless your age is a key element in the case. Then it is perjury.

As it was a sexual harassment case and Clinton having sexual relations with other employees is evidence that he had done such things in the past, Clinton had good reason to lie about it as it could influence the outcome of the case.

It was, therefore, purjery. He was cited with contempt of court for it, but he eventually made a deal with the independant counsel whereby he agreed to suspend his Arkansas law license for five years in order to end the investigation. The IC dropped the investigation, and Clinton ended up being suspended from the US Supreme Court bar as an automatic result of the Arkansas suspension.

Jones's case was dismissed because she failed to show damages, but Clinton ended up settling for $850,000 to avoid further appeals.

Re:Important emails

[nbauman]

You know, if it were just prostitution and extramarital affairs, I wouldn't care if their emails were deleted. Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant. I know that the Republicans saw it as a huge victory when Clinton was impeached basically for having an extramarital affair (and don't tell me that it was for perjury; it was his personal life that was on trial), but, in the grand scheme of things, personal infidelity is probably not the biggest "crime" a public official can commit. I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public, but happens to be a philander, over a president who is completely devoted to his wife, but is willing to step on civil liberties, support torture, or sell out the American public to corporate interests. Likewise, I'm much less concerned about a president who lies about his private life than one who lies about justifications for war.

So, no, I'm not particularly concerned about politicians hiding emails to their girlfriends/boyfriends. We should be so lucky if that's all they were hiding. It's more the potential bribes, nepotism/cronyism, and backroom deals that I'm worried about. Those are the type of things that actually conflict with good governance—in other words, government corruption.

Re:Important emails

[Bigjeff5]

He lied in the middle of a sexual harassment case about ever previously having sex with other employees. That was certainly material to the case, and had he been successful there was a good chance Jones would have lost.

It was not lying about smoking pot that got him in trouble, it was lying about having sex with Monica Lewinsky in the middle of a sexual harassment lawsuit. Whether or not he had sex with other employees was an important point in the case, and he had good reason to lie about it.

That is perjury, it was the basis of his contempt of court citations, and it was the basis of his impeachment. The reason he voluntarily gave up his Arkansas law license for 5 years was as part of an agreement to drop the investigation into the perjury charge.

I'm really not sure how anyone can say it isn't perjury, as all the evidence says otherwise.

I the impeachment may have turned into a witch hunt, but perjury is a very, very serious offense, and the last person in the world who should get away with perjury is the President of the United States.

Re:Important emails

[shentino]

Impeachment trials are a simple vote by the senate.

Apart from that, there is no right to due process. If the senate says you're out, then you're out no matter how innocent you are.

Which is probably one of the many checks and balances the framers put into the Big C.

Re:Important emails

[nomadic]

Actually, no he didn't. Perjury has two key parts: (1) lying under oath - the one you're talking about, and (2) the lie affects the outcome of the case. While he did lie under oath, it didn't affect the outcome of the case.

IAAL and quite familiar with the definition of perjury, and the arguments over whether he lied about a material fact, which is why I put in an "effectively." I have also read the grand jury and deposition transcript excerpts; he dances at the edge of perjury several times, and in my opinion goes over it at least once or twice.

Re:Important emails

[catmistake]

I actually think the Republicans had a legitimate complaint about the lying-under-oath part; Clinton did effectively perjur himself

To be entirely accurate, he did not lie. Asked if he had sex with Lewinski he emphatically said "no." Sex is copulation, not what they did. You can't make babies doing what they did together. So one can only assume that Republicans don't understand what sex is.

Re:Important emails

[catmistake]

It's only a lie if fellatio can produce offspring. Sex is sex. Blowjobs are blowjobs. I don't think he lied. They just asked him the wrong question.

Re:Important emails

[bitt3n]

Those types of personal vices are rather inconsequential to being a good civil servant.

the only problem with such vices is the possibility of blackmail influencing policy decisions. unfortunately, that is a big problem, because there is little reason to trust a given politician will put the public interest before his career.

Re:Important emails

[catmistake]

Even Lewinski claims they never had sex. She gave him a hummer, and for some inexplicable reason Republicans think that's where babies come from. But there's not a single case of a woman becoming pregnant from performing fellatio. He, therefore, didn't have sex with her, and thus wasn't lying. Let's say he wasn't fellated, let's say she gave him a handjob... would you still say he lied?

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like if you outed a gay public official during a time of homophobic public sentiments and bring him to trial for that. He knows that if he admits to being gay, his political career is over. And with all the media attention, attacks on his personal character, extra public scrutiny, etc., he lies under oath about being gay. So you find proof that he is gay and get him on perjury. Sure, you impeached him on legal grounds, but there were no grounds to place his sexual preference on trial in the first place, and he did nothing wrong to begin with.

Umm, he took it in the butt. Stone him.

Re:Important emails

[DoofusOfDeath]

You just made my point. You pledge "Until Death do us part" but some just don't keep that pledge. And of those that have already proven not to keep that pledge, they are more likely not to again...

I don't think GP did make your point. There's still a key open question: does being unfaithful to your spouse correlate with political corruption?

Re:Important emails

[Tynam]

Yes. But then, I'm European. The idea that blowjobs, or handjobs for that matter, aren't sex is a distinctive US cultural trait which many of the rest of us find quite funny.

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that the Republicans saw it as a huge victory when Clinton was impeached basically for having an extramarital affair

Is that what they were upset about? All this time I figured it was for getting a blowjob from an intern inside the Oval Office.

But hey, I'm not Republican or American. I just kinda figured the national insult might have been the big deal there. You know, what with the US being the sort of place that hangs flags friggin everywhere.

Re:Important emails

[epine]

Clinton perjured himself answering questions that would have been better left to judgement day. If the questioning had stuck to whether he compromised his presidential duty (more than a finger wagging), then I would take the perjury charge a lot more seriously. Most of the major institutions of America contain men at the top ruling their institutions while concealing their extra-marital activities or their Percocet habit.

If Alan Turing had been in a situation where no hard evidence had been found, would he have perjured himself to have lied about his orientation and activities? Does McCarthy automatically hold the trump card: guilt by evasion, no matter how inappropriate the question?

Doesn't this play into the whole outwardly irreproachable, inwardly corrupt meme, aka you get what you deserve?

Thomas Barnett draws a new map for peace

I really like this guy. He cracks me up. Mighty fond of his leviathan, but I can overlook that.

America has forgotten how to ask the right question. The right question for Bush V2 was "suppose you kick royal ass once you get there, then what?" That was a rather large fill-in-the-black to be left lying around for a rainy day. Win the peace? We would have had to spell that word out to the commander in chief of act now, think later.

It's sad that politics has devolved to mouse-traps in cookie jars. Ah, we never did that, the mouse traps were too expensive. A bit like Gimli's remark "It's a little tight across the chest." or "We dwarves are natural sprinters. Very dangerous over short distances." He's my favourite character for creative self-representation.

Warning: don't ever Google "Gimli chest" to word a quote correctly. I got a multiple dose of fanfic brain-sear from the Google summaries alone. I love what Turing accomplished, glad I don't have to read his late night fictional musings. Some things should not be recorded.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

Wow, I don't know why anyone modded you insightful, you spouted nothing that hasn't already been said by the Bush bashing comic strips and you even kept it as vague as possible to leave no avenue of address to the specifics of your claims. If you hadn't done that one thing, you would have been shot down by the simplest observations in the scenario. So I have to ask, what was done that warranted impeachments and be specific enough that it can be addressed. Your not going to be able to hash anything out that is truthful and hasn't already been proven to not be impeachment worthy.

As for Obama, you are a complete idiot. The constitution says you cannot work corruption of blood which is exactly what you are suggesting. Why in the fuck can you claim on person violated the constitution or deserved to be impeached with no hard facts to back it up while advocating that the current administration do one of the most abhorrent acts any sitting president could do that not only is forbidden in the constitution, but also a key reason why we rebelled from England in the first place. Is it the ends justify the means only when you agree with it or something?

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

Actually, Clinton signed into law back in 1994 or 96 a provision that allows a person claiming sexual harassment to include outside references of the behavior in order to establish a pattern. Clinton probably didn't realize it at the time but that law made the Lewinsky material relevant to the Jones case. You can't say there was no grounds to involve it because Clinton Signed into law the very grounds that allowed it's involvement.

Now, Clinton also had the option of taking the fifth and then publicly claiming it was no one's business but his own. He was/is a master at spin and could have very well pulled that off. He didn't, he didn't tell the truth, and there are plenty of democrats who had affairs and kept their office so it wasn't like his political career was over. Despite that, his actions got his law license revoked, he was impeached, and he was fined as well as had to pay Jone's attorney's fees. The question was asked of him after his second term in office began as well. Not to many Ex-presidents go on to hold other elected offices so it isn't like his political career would be any more in jeopardy then it was after being president.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

Were you born yesterday? He was asked if he had sexual relations with Lewinsky, not just sex. Furthermore, the court defined what sexual relations entailed and found that Clinton lied during his statement to the court. This lie ended up getting him fined by the court, he lost his law license, and he paid Jones a settlement and lawyers fees to stop it from going to trial again.

I understand your intent on protecting what you believe in no matter what, even if you have to lie about it, but this is well documented and at your fingertips on the internet. You are attempting to make your claims to others who have the same resources, not your intellectually lazy friends who just take your word for it because your IQ is 5 points above average.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

Since when has any politician actually pledge themselves to you or the people.

It's a matter of importance. If they can't keep a pledge, then why do you expect them to remain truthful to you or the people or the office in which they hold? We have already seen people like Clinton violate the Constitution and the war powers act with the Balkan occupation.

You do not need proof to understand that less of a thread binds them to a job compared to a spouse they gave vows to.

Re:Important emails

[ImNotAtWork]

Police Officers and Military personnel pledge to uphold law/constitution. They have a long time away from home and long hours respectively. This puts a strain on many relationships... It's in fact their commitment to their pledge that helps cause many divorces. I personally would never question their commitment to their sworn duties because of a divorce or trist. This doesn't mean I approve of it, it's just that the two pledges are not interdependent.

Re:Important emails

[ewertz]

Really? And that's the only problem? It's no wonder the unemployment rate is so high.

Re:Important emails

[DavidTC]

So I have to ask, what was done that warranted impeachments and be specific enough that it can be addressed.

Um, wiretapping people without warrants? A clear violation of the law. A felony, in fact, for each offense. Um, duh.

Why in the fuck can you claim on person violated the constitution or deserved to be impeached with no hard facts to back it up while advocating that the current administration do one of the most abhorrent acts any sitting president could do that not only is forbidden in the constitution, but also a key reason why we rebelled from England in the first place.

As opposed to Bush torturing people, which even England wouldn't do.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

Police officers and Military personnel aren't exactly elected politicians. However, in most of the cases, it's the half left home who wants the divorce and not the police military officials. For the police officers, I do not trust most of them anyways. You shouldn't either.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

Um, wiretapping people without warrants? A clear violation of the law. A felony, in fact, for each offense. Um, duh.

Like I said, you can provide nothing that hasn't already been discredited. Not one creditable judge has said the wire taping was illegal and the one judge who did, not only got overturned, but also had ties to the ACLU which was a plaintiff in the case. There is good legal evidence that makes the wire taps seem legal in specific situations and congress did not think it was an impeachable offense as the option had been brought up to them several times by the loony-toon democrats.

Also, it's only a violation of the law if the law can be constitutionally applied. There is good support that it couldn't and therefore FISA wouldn't have applied regardless of what it says. The biggest reason congress failed to attempt to impeach Bush was because they knew there was a good chance of this standing and they would lose the power they think they had over the administration.

As opposed to Bush torturing people, which even England wouldn't do.

So two wrongs make a right? I mean what the hell does someone doing something wrong have to do with their children heirs, or whoever other then them? The op said "Obama really needs to issue an executive order to lock them (and their families, aids, hairdressers, etc) up until we get answers to some of those questions" which is a corruption of blood, something clearly denied in the constitution. Now I know your hatred for bush blinds you but think about that, if your daddy goes out and drinks and drives and kills someone, should you be locked up because of it? Should you be locked up on an executive order because of it? That's what your saying isn't it, that because bush supposedly tortured someone, that you can be locked up on a single person's decree simply because you were related to someone who might have did something wrong in some way? Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking here? Even if Bush did do something that even England wouldn't do, it still doesn't make someone else doing severe wrong right.

You idiots simply amaze me. How can anyone take you seriously when your answer to someone supporting a highly repulsive act, an unconstitutional act, an act that led to the revolution in the first place, is at least bush did X. That's fucking ridiculous and frivolous at best. I know you have a brain, fucking use it. I know your capable, we have discussed things in the past. Quit acting moronic here. I'm sorry, but you just set a new low here. "but Obama can do it because Bush did something else". At least when the bush apologists claim "clinton did it", they are actually talking about the same thing or the same context. Fuck, I expected more from you.

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

He was asked if he had sexual relations with Lewinsky, not just sex.

here's a definition

sexual relations = the act of sexual intercourse

stupid troll. I hope your wife gets real pregnant from all the oral congress she's been having.

Re:Important emails

[catmistake]

Europeans procreate with handjobs???!!

Re:Important emails

[countertrolling]

I'd choose a president who respects civil liberties & human rights and acts in the interest of the public...

Let me know if you ever spot one, mkay?

Re:Important emails

[AK Marc]

he didn't tell the truth,

The only time that matters is under oath. He was asked if he had sex with her. He asked for a definition of sex (make sure oral sex was included in the list). Oddly, it wasn't included in the definition the judge gave. He answered the question truthfully under the orders of the judge (which were contrary to the general definitions everyone else uses). He then went with that answer and took it to the people, which was a lie. He did not speak an untruth to the judge. He got confirmation on the definition and answered accordingly. He did not speak it with the intent to deceive, as it was proper according to the instructions. But when he told it to the people, he knew that the answer would mislead. And speaking with the intent to mislead is a lie (even if technically a truth), at least in my book and in most American's books. So he lied to the people, but he did not lie under oath.

And, of course, it took an investigation of about $100 million to find nothing other than people that were not cooperative. Absolutely nothing that was being investigated came close to being substantiated, but they pried enough for so long that they were able to take a single answer to a question and a general distain for for the investigation and turn those into a perjury and obstruction charge.

Re:Important emails

[AK Marc]

Furthermore, the court defined what sexual relations entailed and found that Clinton lied during his statement to the court.

The definition the court gave did not include receiving oral sex. So yes, for the same question, Monica and Clinton should have answered differently. The court found he lied because they made a mistake and changed their minds about the definition after the definition was given and the answer was given because they messed up the definition. And there was a specific definition and the reason the court gave it is because "sexual relations" is not a legal or medical term with a standard definition. And Clinton accurately answered the question as asked. But because the judge essentially misspoke, it turned into perjury and impeachment.

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked that pledge wasn't a requirement for a legally-recognized marriage.

Re:Important emails

[Dan541]

I would love to see a Bastard Operator From Hell type show.

Re:Important emails

[Dan541]

Considering the director was stupid enough to use a the company email system. Sort of like putting your head in a piranha tank.

Re:Important emails

[blueskies]

Because their pledge puts them into much more internal conflict than anything else?

Re:Important emails

[Spazztastic]

It's actually Keyboard Cat. Play him off!

Re:Important emails

[Degrees]

I would argue that allowing a little bit of dishonor 'because it's my personal life' is a bad idea in government. There is a person in our District Attorney's office (former DA) who has been sued for sexual harassment. Specifically, "If you want the promotion, I'll need a blowjob" sexual harassment. Of course, the defendant says it was merely philandery gone bad.

You would give him the right to delete evidence? (Because it's none of the public's business)?

I don't see the problem with just demanding honor, particularly wrt retention of evidence. If you don't want to be called a dirty old man, don't BE a dirty old man. The evidence takes care of itself that way.

Re:Important emails

[Tynam]

Yes, it's been known to happen. Mostly in infertility clinics. ;)

For those who missed it: Europeans don't think you have to have babies to be having sex. We find these two situations easy to distinguish. Hint: It's also still sex if you're using a condom.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

The only time that matters is under oath. He asked for a definition of sex (make sure oral sex was included in the list). Oddly, it wasn't included in the definition the judge gave.

Actually it was and the judge fined Clinton and he lost his law license because of it. This is the definition the Judge gave

"For the purposes of this deposition, a person engages in sexual relations when the person knowingly engages in or causes:

1. Contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person;
2. Contact between any part of the person's body or an object and the genitals or anus of another person; or
3. Contact between the genitals or anus of the person and any part of another person's body.

Contact means intentional touching, either directly or through clothing."

Now tell me, how is oral sex or fiddling twat with a cigar not covered. The definition specifically outlines the touching of any genitalia directly or indirectly with an object for sexual purposes.

He then went with that answer and took it to the people, which was a lie. He did not speak an untruth to the judge

Yes he did lie. He asked for the definition to be read before he answered so there was no mistake and the definition required him to admit to getting a blowjob in the least because it's covered specifically by "Contact with the genitalia, anus, groin, breast, inner thigh, or buttocks of any person with an intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person; and # Contact between any part of the person's body or an object and the genitals or anus of another person;" Fuck dude, give it up, all this information is out on the internet and there is no excuse for you to remain willfully ignorant over it.

He did not speak it with the intent to deceive, as it was proper according to the instructions. But when he told it to the people, he knew that the answer would mislead. And speaking with the intent to mislead is a lie (even if technically a truth), at least in my book and in most American's books. So he lied to the people, but he did not lie under oath.

He was the chief law enforcement officer in the land and lied in court to save his ass from a sexual harassment lawsuit that he eventually settled out of court. You can't sit here and say it was a lie to the people and not to the court when the fucking definition the court gave included both the blow jobs and diddling twat with cigars. Quit attempting to distort history in order to save a tarnished image.

And, of course, it took an investigation of about $100 million to find nothing other than people that were not cooperative. Absolutely nothing that was being investigated came close to being substantiated, but they pried enough for so long that they were able to take a single answer to a question and a general distain for for the investigation and turn those into a perjury and obstruction charge.

Maybe, just Maybe, if the clintons were not so used to lieing that they will do it in federal court to save their ass, and if the people were cooperative, then something would have been found. What you are saying right here is that nothing was found because people stonewalled and weren't truthful. Now why Star went after the perjury investigation is unknown but the bottom line is that Janet Reno, Clinton's attorney general, gave the ok for Star to move in that direction. That's right, it was a democrat appointed by Clinton himself who gave Ken Star the Authority to look into the Lewinsky matter. Now get over it and quit distorting history and attempting to paint a picture that doesn't exist.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

You need to give up. The definition wasn't changed, it was defined at the beginning of the trial, it was read to Clinton before he answered the question. He knew well in advance of the question what the court expected the definition to be, he was a fucking lawyer and wrongly attempted to mislead the court with an untruthful answer which was reflected in the courts punishment of Clinton and his loss of law licenses.

Now you are correct in that the definition wasn't codified into law, the next nearest definition would be in the civil right act of 1964 which was much more broad and would still have included Clinton's escapades. It wasn't used because it would have included much more.

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a virgin, at least I thought I was. Last week after school I got to second base. Am I still a virgin? If Monica was a virgin at the time of Bill's indescretion, was she no longer a virgin afterwards? Because if she was a virgin, and retained her virginity, I don't see how it could be called sex.

Re:Important emails

[catmistake]

Europeans don't think you have to have babies to be having sex

So... intercourse is not required for european sex?! Ridiculous. There is foreplay, and there is sex. These acts may happen within proximity to each other, but a person having an orgasm in a room by themselves is not having sex, that much is clear. Digital, and even oral, stimulation is not copulation. But I'll agree that an unsuccessful mating, even if intentionally unsuccessful as by using certain methods of birth control, is still sex.

On the other hand, this european standard may explain why american girls have had this reputation for being easy... they thought they were merely being friendly when all the while, unbeknownst to them, they were being euro-raped.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

IF a court defines being a virgin as not getting to second base, then for the purpose of that court, no you are not a virgin.

This isn't about abstract meanings. Clinton and his lawyers had the court defined definition and Clinton actually asked to have it repeated to him before he lied about it. The question was about sexual relations which the definition included diddling twat with cigars and oral sex. It would also include you getting to second base whether you remained a virgin or not by any definition.

Please stop trying so hard to defend the guy who already has admited to it and distorting the context in the process. It's been 10 years since it happened, the facts are know, and only idiots like you and the OP pretend to make up different ones in order to stick up for the guy. It only serves to make you look like a loser which is probably why you posted AC instead of being brave enough to put your name on it.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

At times like this, I'm reminded of the Wizard of Oz where the scarecrow sings "if I only had a brain". I imagine you doing that a lot.

Your definition doesn't matter because the court supplied a specific definition and Clinton was told to answer under that definition. That specific definition that Clinton not only had access to for almost the entire trial, but also asked to have it repeated right before he answered the question. Clinton knew full well what was required of him and you pointing to some other source is not genius as you think, it just shows how difficult it is for you to follow facts and comprehend the situation.

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

IF a court defines

What court are you talking about? Do you even know what impeachment is? If you did, you'd know it takes place in the legislature, not in judicial court. And even in court, a prosecution is not permitted to redefine well known and accepted definitions for the purposes of conviction. Further, you may or may not have made valid points, but you've dimished whatever position you hold by a lack of restraint for the ad hominem. If you can't excercise self-control, you have no hope to hold intelligent discourse, though I suppose this is readily apparent by your clever screenname.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

What court are you talking about? Do you even know what impeachment is? If you did, you'd know it takes place in the legislature, not in judicial court.

I'm talking about the court of law President Bill Clinton was in when he was the defendant of the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit. That's when he lied under oath and that's the perjury that the impeachment charges talk about.

Did you do the slightest bit is looking up the facts or are you simply spouting halth truths on purpose?

And even in court, a prosecution is not permitted to redefine well known and accepted definitions for the purposes of conviction.

The prosecution did not redefine anything. Judge Susan Weber Wright defined the term so as to be completely clear what the intents of asking the question would be. The plaintiff and the defendant both negotiated on the definition to be used but it was the Judge who set it in stone for the purposes of the case.

Again, did you remotely look into the facts surrounding this before spouting untrue accusations? This even was ten years ago and all the facts are freely availible to anyone who isn't intellectually lazy. There is no excuse for you not knowing about this and then attempting to spout off whatever you can make up in your head.

Further, you may or may not have made valid points, but you've dimished whatever position you hold by a lack of restraint for the ad hominem. If you can't excercise self-control, you have no hope to hold intelligent discourse, though I suppose this is readily apparent by your clever screenname.

No, I didn't invalidate anything. This has been publicly discusses and is ten years old by now. There is no excuse for you not knowing what happened and attempting to chime in as if you did. You have completely made shit up with no other purpose then to misconstrue the facts. This is slashdot, not 4chan, do not expect to argue with someone when you can't be bothered to learn the facts surrounding your position. These facts are not disputed by anyone who has exerted the simplest amount of effort looking into them. You attempted to present a fallacious situation and attribute it to something that couldn't be further from the truth of the matter while claiming everyone else in the world is wrong. IF you feel like I treated you like an idiot, you should because your own actions warrant that distinction.

Re:Important emails

[DavidTC]

Like I said, you can provide nothing that hasn't already been discredited. Not one creditable judge has said the wire taping was illegal and the one judge who did, not only got overturned, but also had ties to the ACLU which was a plaintiff in the case.

You know, I was going to make a nice long reply to this, but if you can't even do the most basic research about this, I don't know why I'm bothering.

Courts have two things...first a findings of law, and findings of fact. That is, before a case starts, before anyone starts asserting what did, or didn't, happen, they first make sure the behavior actually alleged was in violation of the law. This do this finding of law before any testimony or evidence, so the court doesn't, for example, charge people with things that are not actually illegal even if all the facts alleges were proven true.

And, and this is very important, neither court which heard the ACLU's case did so. Neither of them threw out the case on finding of law, which means the court thinks such behavior by the government would be illegal, at least to the extent the court can tell. To restate: The courts seem to think that such wiretapping would be illegal if done to the plaintiffs.

However, the ACLU failed to demonstrate that it had been done to the plaintiffs, and hence the case was thrown out. (They failed to prove it because the court refused to accept a classified document the ACLU had accidentally been handed that proved it.)

You can stand there and argue that, because of the lack of evidence, there was no wiretapping, and hence everything was legal. You'll sound crazy, but you can, in theory, argue that.

But you cannot argue that the courts found such wiretapping legal, as they most certainly did not. They found it couldn't be proven to have happened.

There is good legal evidence that makes the wire taps seem legal in specific situations and congress did not think it was an impeachable offense as the option had been brought up to them several times by the loony-toon democrats.

There is absolutely no legal theory that would allow the president to spy on communications of American citizens without warrants.

So two wrongs make a right? I mean what the hell does someone doing something wrong have to do with their children heirs, or whoever other then them? The op said "Obama really needs to issue an executive order to lock them (and their families, aids, hairdressers, etc) up until we get answers to some of those questions" which is a corruption of blood, something clearly denied in the constitution.

Yes, because someone on slashdot suggesting something is even vaguely relevant to the actual government actually doing things.

Now I know your hatred for bush blinds you but think about that, if your daddy goes out and drinks and drives and kills someone, should you be locked up because of it? Should you be locked up on an executive order because of it?

Ha ha ha ha ha.

That's what your saying isn't it, that because bush supposedly tortured someone, that you can be locked up on a single person's decree simply because you were related to someone who might have did something wrong in some way? Seriously, what the fuck are you thinking here?

I didn't say any such thing at all, Mr. Delusional.

Even if Bush did do something that even England wouldn't do, it still doesn't make someone else doing severe wrong right.

Really? So locking people up in Gitmo who might be able to provide evidence of crimes is now not acceptable? Interesting. When did that happen? January 12 2009, right?

People committing hundreds, perhaps thousands, of felonies certainly seems like a reasonable reason to lock people up in Gitmo, according to my understand of it.

Re:Important emails

[Tynam]

So... intercourse is not required for european sex?! Ridiculous.

Possibly ridiculous, but definitely true. I offer an easy proof-by-experiment: go down on, say, a French girl, then ask her whether you've had sex.

There is foreplay, and there is sex. These acts may happen within proximity to each other, but a person having an orgasm in a room by themselves is not having sex, that much is clear.

Yep, clearly. But that's not the discussion. A person having an orgasm in a room with somebody else, in one of their orifices, is clearly having sex regardless of which hole they use.

On the other hand, this european standard may explain why american girls have had this reputation for being easy... they thought they were merely being friendly when all the while, unbeknownst to them, they were being euro-raped.

Hmmm... this almost makes a bizarre sense. An American girl can, apparently, have anal sex while blowing another man, and then tell herself there wasn't any sex. Anal is the new heavy petting.

Huh.

This entire discussion is getting silly, even by my generous standards, so I'll finish on that thought.

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

You know, I was going to make a nice long reply to this, but if you can't even do the most basic research about this, I don't know why I'm bothering.

Courts have two things...first a findings of law, and findings of fact. That is, before a case starts, before anyone starts asserting what did, or didn't, happen, they first make sure the behavior actually alleged was in violation of the law. This do this finding of law before any testimony or evidence, so the court doesn't, for example, charge people with things that are not actually illegal even if all the facts alleges were proven true.

And, and this is very important, neither court which heard the ACLU's case did so. Neither of them threw out the case on finding of law, which means the court thinks such behavior by the government would be illegal, at least to the extent the court can tell. To restate: The courts seem to think that such wiretapping would be illegal if done to the plaintiffs.

You still fail. You are attempting to jump from neither court determined the facts to it's a fact because neither court threw the case out because of it. Now what this means isn't that it's a fact that Bush violated the law, it means it's possible. However, no court has declared it a violation of the law except one in which the judge had a personal interest in.

Now you are also wrong about the findings a court makes. It does not find that a violation of a law happened, the find that it's possible it happened and the case determines if it happened or not. Often, after the court has taken testimony and tried the facts, it is determined that a law was not broken. You are no closer then if the case didn't happen at all- let alone happen by someone who should have recused herself because of personal interest. If you knew half as much as you think you do about law and court, you wouldn't have just attempted to blatantly misconstrue the process.

You can stand there and argue that, because of the lack of evidence, there was no wiretapping, and hence everything was legal. You'll sound crazy, but you can, in theory, argue that.

Why in the hell would I want to do that for. I already said that there is plenty of support for the taps to of been legal. Unlike you, I do not need to obscure things to make my point.

But you cannot argue that the courts found such wiretapping legal, as they most certainly did not. They found it couldn't be proven to have happened.

I think you have a problem with your reading comprehension. I have never said the courts found them legal, I have said that the courts have not competently ruled on them one way or the other and that there is support for the idea that they were legal. How you can mangle that into a ignoring them or that a court has already ruled is beyond me.

There is absolutely no legal theory that would allow the president to spy on communications of American citizens without warrants.

Yes there is. In the 1968 Omnibus Crime bill, it provided exceptions to the wiretaping and stated the warant requirement would not be construed to "limit the constitutional power of the President to take such measures as he deems necessary to protect the Nation against actual or potential attack or other hostile acts of a foreign power, to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States, or to protect national security information against foreign intelligence activities."

Now congress believed the president had this power constitutionally in 1967-68, so how did it disappear without any constitutional amendments?

FISA came about to limit abuses where domestic law enforcement agents were going to the CIA or military and claiming national security to get around warrants. FISA does not removed the president's constitutional authority as confirmed by the 1968 Omnibus

Re:Important emails

[Kashgarinn]

"That said, I don't really trust a damn one of them..."

- that's why you should support email retention policies and check if they aren't using them in your district.

You should also be wary of any politician who doesn't use email as a form of communication and prides himself on it.

Re:Important emails

[Anonymous Coward]

That's when he lied under oath and that's the perjury that the impeachment charges talk about.

Clinton did not purger himself, and we know this because he was acquitted of the charge. The accusation of perjury came from a man that had no idea what a blow job was, had never heard of it, so its no wonder that he, like you, was mistaken. Again, Clinton didn't lie, and most of the Senate agreed, and that alone is the sole legal authority on the matter.

You are a liar and a troll and apparently get your jollies by spreading misinformation and absurd insults.

Re:Important emails

[DavidTC]

Now you are also wrong about the findings a court makes. It does not find that a violation of a law happened, the find that it's possible it happened and the case determines if it happened or not. Often, after the court has taken testimony and tried the facts, it is determined that a law was not broken.

I really don't know why I discuss things with you, as you've repeatedly demonstrated you're as dumb as a post.

Courts, before they listen to any facts, they determine whether or not it would constitute a violation of the law if those facts proved what the prosecutor wanted. There is something called a question of law, which is entirely distinct from the question of facts which is the trial itself.

As an example you may be able to understand, let us say the police arrest me for turning right on a red light. In some jurisdictions, where that is illegal, there would actually be a case there, where people would introduce evidence and witnesses.

In other places, where that is legal, the case would be thrown on the finding of law that such behavior is not actually illegal, regardless of what I actually did or didn't do. The person's 'guilt' or 'innocence' doesn't enter into it, because said behavior isn't actually a crime.

Now, hold that thought, and let's get back to what you said. And I'll quote 'Not one creditable judge has said the wire taping was illegal'.

Judges can, in fact, do that. They can say something isn't a crime. That would be a finding of law. They can stand there and say 'The behavior that this person is accused of is not a crime, case dismissed.'. They do this first, before any evidence is presented. (Because, obviously, it doesn't depend on any evidence.)

They did not do that in this case. They got past that little hurdle, and then threw out the case due to lack of evidence. (Strictly speaking, it was lack of evidence of standing, not lack of evidence of the crime itself, but that amounts to the same thing here.)

In other words, according to the court, the US government has not been proven to have done specific acts which the courts thinks would be illegal. They said, quite clearly to anyone who knows that the slightest bit about courts, that they think that behavior might be illegal but that it cannot be proven the government actually did it.

Incidentally, your claim that the judge who originally found them guilty was operating in an unprofessional manner is idiotic.

The first judge found them guilty because he accepted, into evidence, a document that the government had mistakenly given the ACLU demonstrating that the person in the suit was wiretapped.

On appeal, another judge refused to let that be entered as evidence, allowing the government to claim 'national security' for a document already publically published, and hence the ACLU had no evidence of the wiretapping.

You're arguing that it is incorrect behavior for judges to admit documents into evidence.

Now congress believed the president had this power constitutionally in 1967-68, so how did it disappear without any constitutional amendments?

'Congress' is not in charge of what constitutional powers the president has, you moron. The Constitution is.

Now, I like the way you attempted to phrase this whole phone tap business as openly as possible to make it appear that the government was listening to you tell Aunt Betty, mom's cookie recipe, but the reality of it is a lot different. The phone taps were only on people who were in contact with known terrorist and one end of the phone call was from outside the country. No one who has had any insight into the program, and yes, that includes democrats too, has ever made the claim otherwise.

Yeah, no one's suggested tha

Re:Important emails

[sumdumass]

You need to give up and stop misrepresenting the legal system as well as the situation. You are severely confused whether you know it or not and continuing to tripe on just makes you look silly.

I really don't know why I discuss things with you, as you've repeatedly demonstrated you're as dumb as a post.

Courts, before they listen to any facts, they determine whether or not it would constitute a violation of the law if those facts proved what the prosecutor wanted. There is something called a question of law [wikipedia.org], which is entirely distinct from the question of facts [wikipedia.org] which is the trial itself.

As an example you may be able to understand, let us say the police arrest me for turning right on a red light. In some jurisdictions, where that is illegal, there would actually be a case there, where people would introduce evidence and witnesses.

In other places, where that is legal, the case would be thrown on the finding of law that such behavior is not actually illegal, regardless of what I actually did or didn't do. The person's 'guilt' or 'innocence' doesn't enter into it, because said behavior isn't actually a crime.

First of all, this is a civil case up to this point, not criminal charges have ever been filed. What you describe in running a red light has an indictment process that either employs a grand jury or witness indictment by an officer of the law. In a civil trial, they look at the claims to see if they can be supported and if someone has standing in law. It does not mean a law was violated or that anyone violated any laws. It means that the claim is substantial enough that the claim could be supported and nothing else. The appeals court tossed the case out (and the injunction) because the plaintiff didn't have standing to pursuit the matter. That still doesn't mean that a law was broken, that needs to be proven first and it wasn't.

Now, hold that thought, and let's get back to what you said. And I'll quote 'Not one creditable judge has said the wire taping was illegal'.

Judges can, in fact, do that. They can say something isn't a crime. That would be a finding of law. They can stand there and say 'The behavior that this person is accused of is not a crime, case dismissed.'. They do this first, before any evidence is presented. (Because, obviously, it doesn't depend on any evidence.)

They did not do that in this case. They got past that little hurdle, and then threw out the case due to lack of evidence. (Strictly speaking, it was lack of evidence of standing, not lack of evidence of the crime itself, but that amounts to the same thing here.)

In other words, according to the court, the US government has not been proven to have done specific acts which the courts thinks would be illegal. They said, quite clearly to anyone who knows that the slightest bit about courts, that they think that behavior might be illegal but that it cannot be proven the government actually did it.

Incidentally, your claim that the judge who originally found them guilty was operating in an unprofessional manner is idiotic.

First of all, you need to change would to could. Would is presupposed considering the claims and facts pan out. Without the plaintiff proving those, and barring any exceptions to the rule which is what I suggested in the first place that is supported by congressional action, the proper wording is could not would. Second, the claim was "creditable court". The judge had a clear biased interest in the plaintiff of the case (ACLU) which is most probably why the case had to go to an appeals court in order to be tossed out instead of the original judge doing what's right according to the rules and law in the first place. The judge lost all credibility when she refused to recuse herself and then acting in a manor that a higher court had to overturn.

The first judge found

Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody in Boston...

[ivan256]

In the recent debate he claimed there was no evidence he was corrupt. I guess this show's it's 'cause he deletes most of it...

When confronted with the fact that he sold city property to two of his friends for really cheap, he said that it was "only two out of hundreds of deals". I guess it's OK to break the law if you only do it a couple percent of the time?

Best part? He's going to win again.

Seems to me that the bigger the city, the more stupid the voters are...

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody in Boston...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Seems to me that the bigger the city, the more stupid the voters are...

one hallmark of success is considered moving out of the city.

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody in Boston...

[Jurily]

When confronted with the fact that he sold city property to two of his friends for really cheap, he said that it was "only two out of hundreds of deals". I guess it's OK to break the law if you only do it a couple percent of the time?

I wish he was Hungarian. I don't know of a single state property being sold without corruption involved since the Soviet army moved out.

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody in Boston...

[Norsefire]

Seems to me that the bigger the city, the more stupid the voters are...

"How fortunate for leaders that men do not think"

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody in Boston...

[rohan972]

Seems to me that the bigger the city, the more stupid the voters are...

Didn't the US start off that only landowners could vote?

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody in Boston...

[fumblebruschi]

According to TFA (and I have also read this in the Boston newspapers many times over the years) Menino simply does not use email. So in his case there's nothing to save or delete.

I should say that in itself that doesn't mean he's hiding something. He is, after all, almost seventy. My dad doesn't use email either.

Re:Shouldn't be a surprise to anybody in Boston...

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger the position, the more issues there are, while simultaneously the less attention voters can spare for each individual one. That automatically makes it really hard for a newcomer to unseat an incumbent - because, likewise, it's really hard to evaluate the new guy's stances on that same wide range of issues. That's why when you see turnover in a high position, it's usually due to one of three things: 1) lifetime term limit is up 2) massive massive scandal 3) they had different positions on a divisive hyped up issue such that enough voters felt they had to side with one against the other. The rest of the time, it's a bewildering flurry of nitpicking as each candidate tries to look competent while trying to "make mountains out of molehills" in attacks on the opposition, searching for some hot issue that will be enough to decide the election in their favor. And, psychologically, humans (both individually and as a group) are pretty bad at evaluating something complex like 5 candidates and their platforms on 60 issues - in fact, we've been known to have trouble beyond choosing between three two-variable choices. As a thought experiment, consider the last few big elections you've voted in; for each individual voter, it probably came down to only a small number of issues that were the deciding factor, didn't it? Even today, those tea party people, when you hear their actual comments in the crowd, are usually only there on *one* big issue, with the others sort of thrown in as an afterthought.

It scales up and down in scope too; consider elections for governors and presidents, and the approval process for federal supreme court judges and cabinet members. On the other end, at the small town level, it's usually blisteringly obvious whether someone is competent for a position after their first term is over, since the number of job duties and the number of locals is so small and the results so directly witnessed, so you tend to see either very long or very short careers there.

Retention is the BIG issue

[redelm]

Since very little is monitored LIVE because it is extremely expensive, retention time of email, logs, etc. is crucial. Too long and you encourage witchhunts from the past, too short and you abet felonies.

The real problem is is that law makers (and enforcement) often think themselves above the law. They made/enforced it, so can change/ignore it. Worse, the punishments for such violations is almost always minor. "Whaddyou gonna doo 'bout it?"

A simple answer is to charge felony "obstruction of justice", and have the felony provisions remove from office. This is highly unlikely to happen for reasons of "good buddy" through to not causing excessive fear in the bureaucracy.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[hedwards]

Or you know a procmail script which automatically diverts one copy of an email to a storage mailbox and one to the recipient. Inconsequential emails can usually be weeded out fairly quickly later on if needed, and spam isn't that tough to remove via a filter if you don't have to do it immediately.

The only issue then is storage space and backups, which any decent IT department can handle given a reasonable amount of funding. And it's something that should be done either way.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[timeOday]

Since very little is monitored LIVE because it is extremely expensive, retention time of email, logs, etc. is crucial.

I don't see why it is crucial. Phonecalls aren't recorded. Paper mail isn't steamed open and photocopied. I don't really mind if official emails are retained, but mostly what it does is decrease efficiency by steering people away from email even when it would be the most efficient means of communication.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[rtb61]

Originally, I felt that email for government should be retained, however there really does need to be a different consideration between formal and informal email ie. email that is a part of formal administrative functions and email that just represents informal communications.

The question is where exactly do you fit in email between old world snail mail and a conversation whether in person on via say voip. Very interesting when you compare voip to email, as they both represent digital electronic transmission via the vary same infrastructure the only difference is the formatting of those messages.

So really the question is whether all communications between politicians and private parties or government departments should be recorded or whether there is a substantive difference between formal and informal communications and only formal communications should be recorded and retained and informal communications non instructional, non informative and non directional should just be allowed to fade away.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[redelm]

Decrease efficiency -- YES, especially for malfeasance.

Officials hold offices and are doing public things. They have no right of privacy WRT offical acts. And ought not be doing non-offical acts on the public dime.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[mabhatter654]

paper mail is very legal. If you certify a document sent via "normal Mail" like many court summons, then it is legally binding that you received the document at that address. In the case of paper mail You would have a copy that was notarized and the post would have copy of the register if you paid for registered service, but "normal mail" is legally enough. Fax documents can be traced by the phone company (non-repudiation is one thing email doesn't do yet) that your fax called their fax. So if you press for a document faxed 9 months ago and legal retention is 1 year "lost in the mail" is not a valid defense a court will accept if it was to be retained.

The SEC is VERY clear that for business purposes like insider trading, contract negotiation and such that emails, slashdot posts, twitters, IMs going out of your business are all "relevant communications" that's why companies are absolutely paranoid about firewalls these days and ANY personal use of emails and such is strictly limited as much as possible. It's always ironic that running the city/state/country is never as important as running the smallest corporation!

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[Sparr0]

Err, registered mail and traced faxes prove that you sent SOMETHING. They say nothing about the contents.

See people mailing bricks and then showing USPS shipping receipts to PayPal.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[Dare nMc]

phones can be recorded at any-time, paper is "hard" evidence and any fraud going through federal mail is automatically a felony. Email has to be more difficult unless something is built into the system, and without a context, and history it isn't all that convincing. IE if whistle blower turns on him, a retained email you received isn't good evidence, unless we have a hard log somewhere that has the meaningful bits in it. If you record a call you have voice prints, and difficulty to have undetectable modifications to that recording...

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[haruharaharu]

so what? It's still binding.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[xC0000005]

That's exactly what the journaling option they've implemented does. Mail in or out gets copied to the journal recipient.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[Sparr0]

It's still binding on who for what? You have proof that you mailed something to me. You have no proof that you mailed the document in question.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[haruharaharu]

Binding on the defendant for receipt of process. If you don't think it was properly served, argue with the judge. For a fee, you can have a sheriff's deputee serve process.

Re:Retention is the BIG issue

[Sparr0]

Where I live (GA), that's only binding if the court does the mailing. If you personally mail the subpoena, with any sort of confirmation/tracking you can name, you've got no proof of receipt. That's the way it should be, in the same way as evidentiary chain of custody. If anyone involved in the process isn't "part of the system" and legally trusted then the process is suspect.

New manning slot?

[GaryOlson]

Everyone raise their equivalent electronic hands who thinks the City of Boston is going to increase manning for the IT staff to accommodate this increase in workload, scope, and new technology implementation?

No hands. Sucks to be an IT admin for the City of Boston about now.

Re:New manning slot?

[pushf popf]

Everyone raise their equivalent electronic hands who thinks the City of Boston is going to increase manning for the IT staff to accommodate this increase in workload, scope, and new technology implementation? No hands. Sucks to be an IT admin for the City of Boston about now.

Nothing will happen for the near future. The city will say "We don't have enough money to implement this" (which is probably true) and ask for more money, which will be rejected. Eventually someone will get a court order, ordering them to comply with the law, and it will go around for a while, as they decide if it's cheaper to spend millions of dollars on an upgrade, whatever the court fines the city, or to take it out of the School Lunch program.

I'd give them another 10 or 20 years before this is implemented.

Re:New manning slot?

[Anonymous Coward]

How exactly does it require extra extra resources to STOP doing something?

Re:New manning slot?

[yuna49]

Not enough money? Give me a break. I can build a Linux box that runs MailScanner, stick it in front of whatever e-mail server they run, and have that box archive every single message. Throw in a few terabyte drives and the whole thing might come to $5-10K including my time. I consult to a Community Health Center and have built a fairly elaborate scripted system that archives emails for every single mailbox every night and rotates the archives in accordance with the health center's policies. I think I charged them something like a thousand dollars for that job.

It has nothing to do with not having enough money, and everything to do with incompetence. If they're not archiving email, what else aren't they archiving? How useful is it to have public disclosure laws when the systems are designed to avoid document archiving.

Re:New manning slot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Money is tight, but seems the city had enough money for this, though.

Re:New manning slot?

[selven]

Retaining emails with backups is more costly than you think.

Re:New manning slot?

[NotBornYesterday]

It has nothing to do with not having enough money, and everything to do with arrogance, greed, and corruption.

FTFY

Re:New manning slot?

[yuna49]

Want to give us some details rather than an offhand comment?

Presumably the City already have some backup and archiving systems in place; how expensive is adding email archiving to that infrastructure?

Regardless of how expensive it might be, it is mandated by Massachusetts law.

Re:New manning slot?

[GaryOlson]

I see you lack experience with a marginally competent workforce who has been handed a mandate. Civil servants attempt to transfer thru email 2GB spreadsheets, ppt presentations, or pdf files. Once the mandate for retention is implemented, these civil servants attempt to use their inbox as a CVS for these files. Administration won't provide budget for CVS training for these marginal bureaucrats; and the staff won't learn on their own initiative. And, rather than showing proper leadership, administration gets tired of listening to complaints about email box size constraints and other whining; then instructs IT to lift all constraints and back-up everything.

Your naivete and inexperience is amusing.

Re:New manning slot?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you--but there's no way you can do that for an enterprise environment at that kind of rate. And...I'm...just a little peon studying for such an environment. This is the city of Boston we're talking about--they may not be google...but they're going to have a real IT system in place with administrative overhead and policies.

You haven't specced the hardware, checked the power and cooling constraints, verified that it fits in the data center. Assuming they actually run on hardware. And that's just your starting point...

You're going to throw in a few terrabytes of storage huh? What type of drives? You're not getting terrabytes of SCSI storage that cheap...planning on throwing the whole city's email on SATA without any RAID? By the way...is this system fault tolerant? At the very least if you've gone into server class hardware with onboard RAID, dual NICs, redundant power supply and remote management capabilities you've *started* at 3 grand for entry level hardware. And anything less just isn't worth considering given the price of human management time.... unless you want your sysop fresh out of school.

Now you've specced the hardware, got it approved by IT through some sort of expedited magic, and even got the software authorized. But wait...what about backups and actual storage?

Backups: Does the current NAS/SAN have capacity for the daily dumps of the machine or its VM image? Are you going to have to train somebody to rotate another ....tape...? What amount of downtime is permissible by law, and how will you have them document and track it?

If you touch a project like that for 10k, you deserve all the hell you have coming if there's ever a problem.

Look--I piece together a $200 firewall for my home network and like it as much if not better than PIX crap--and I *enjoy* doing things myself--cheap and cost effective. And you can take all of that experience and training out into the real world--but you *can't* take the hardware out there--it doesn't scale, and it isn't compliant--and for any organization of real scale, "cheap" hardware is more expensive because of the human time it takes to upkeep it.

Re:New manning slot?

[SClitheroe]

"And you can take all of that experience and training out into the real world--but you *can't* take the hardware out there--it doesn't scale, and it isn't compliant--and for any organization of real scale, "cheap" hardware is more expensive because of the human time it takes to upkeep it."

- Unless you are google, you mean...they seem to do it. They are a special case though, having built all their management processes around lowest common denominator hardware.

Why tagged "republicans"???

[Vinegar Joe]

Since 1930, every mayor of Boston has been a Democrat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Boston

Re:Why tagged "republicans"???

[roaddemon]

Shockingly, there have only been 5 mayors since 1950. Loyal city.

Re:Why tagged "republicans"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Shockingly, there have only been 5 mayors since 1950. Loyal city.

Even more shocking, the one before that continued to be mayors for another 3 years after spending 5 month in jail.

Re:Why tagged "republicans"???

[houstonbofh]

Shockingly, there have only been 5 mayors since 1950. Loyal city.

"Loyal" is not the word I would choose.

Re:Why tagged "republicans"???

[Anonymous Coward]

Shockingly, there have only been 5 mayors since 1950. Lazy city.

There. Fixed that for ya.

Re:Why tagged "republicans"???

[ctmurray]

Chicago too...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mayors_of_Chicago

This is why term limits are needed

[Anonymous Coward]

The attitude of an entrenched incumbent like Menino is: I've been here long enough to know what works, the systems are working for me, and nobody important (e.g. governor, head of teacher's union) has raised this issue to me face to face, so there is no need to review or upgrade anything. He'll spend the city's money on stuff where he sees a direct political or personal payoff.

For example: a couple years ago he commissioned an architectural study for a brand new city hall on prime waterfront property, because the current building is often mocked for its idiosyncratic architecture. I'm sure he smiled every night as he thought of tourists from around the world looking up at the gleaming "Thomas M. Menino City Hall". Guess who would be picking up the tab. (The project is currently on hold because of the recession).

The advantages of incumbency are huge. The mayor controls the city's resources and can withhold them from the districts of city councilors who publicly oppose him; and of course, he can fire anyone who works for the city of Boston who creates problems for him. He's got his name prominently displayed on every development project in town ("Getting the job done... Thomas M. Menino, Mayor"). Thus, the arc of his tenure has been about consolidation of power and marginalization of potential opponents. Also, the newspaper business has declined for the past ten years or so coinciding with the rise of the Internet, so newspapers have fewer resources to spare on investigative journalism. Of course, all this is not unique to Boston, but applies to most any long-time incumbent mayor.

Re:This is why term limits are needed

[hedwards]

It's more than that, corrupt politicians in the US have pretty much always gotten more done than ones doing things legally. Never has the US government been so responsive to the citizenry than during the period where the boss system was in force. It was beyond a doubt incredibly corrupt, but at least they got you a job if you didn't have one, sent a doctor if you weren't well and actually considered the people's well being, you just had to show up on election day, hell they'd even drive you there and provide free drinks.

Obviously, it's horribly corrupt and has serious issues, but they did get a lot done, and try getting the government to give a damn about you now. Not going to happen as long as the Republicans are trying their hardest to stop living wages and health care and the Democrats are so horribly incompetent.

Re:This is why term limits are needed

[dotfile]

You make a good point, but it's not like that's a reason to tolerate the corruption. Benito Mussolini finally made the trains in Italy run on time, but I think most would agree that the benefits of his time at the helm were outweighed by the more negative impact.

Re:This is why term limits are needed

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Ernest Hemingway, who went to Italy as a newspaper reporter in the thirties, the "trains run on time" line was propaganda. He said Italian train schedules were "a laughable fiction". So Mussolini didn't even have that going for him.

Re:This is why term limits are needed

[fumblebruschi]

It's more than "idiosyncratic". It has been voted in several international polls as the single ugliest building in the whole world.

I haven't seen every building in the world, but City Hall is certainly the ugliest building I have ever seen. I hate it, and so does everyone else I have ever spoken to about it. I would happily endorse any amount of government corruption to get rid of that thing. Having it gone would improve my life, and I wouldn't care how many of Menino's friends got rich off the project.

Re:This is why term limits are needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Boston City Hall may be ugly, but it's ugly in an interesting way, comparable to some of Le Corbusier's work. I would not call it a stupid, boring piece of architecture, nor is it flashy and bombastic.

It was (and still is) regarded as a milestone of the Brutalist architecture that was in vogue at the time. There is evidence that city employees felt good about working there.

Besides, it is ideally located near the hub of Boston's subway system. The waterfront would take an extra 15 minutes driving or subway time to get to, and would likely displace a showcase development project from the private sector that citizens might actually look forward to visiting. And I'm sure they'd make it really big, the better to house hundreds of additional city employees and dozens of extra departments to serve empire-building bureaucrats.

Re:This is why term limits are needed

[DavidTC]

The trains didn't run on time. What that actually demonstrates that, under fascism, no one reports the trains aren't on time.

Re:This is why term limits are needed

[fumblebruschi]

If I could, I would travel around the world with dynamite and blow up every awful pile of garbage Le Corbusier inflicted on the public.

"ugly in an interesting way" is fine for sculptures in a gallery where people want to see them. It's not fine for a huge building smack in the middle of a busy part of the city, where everyone has to look at it whether they want to or not. Just having to work near that thing damages my life. Working in it would be like carrying a great weight around all the time. I mean, just the fact that the style is named "Brutalist" should tell you that the architect didn't care that looking at the thing makes people depressed.

Never mind that the architect apparently never stopped to think that flat-roofed concrete buildings are not suited to a city that gets as much rain and snow as Boston does; City Hall is covered with nasty brown stains where rust from the rebar is leaching out.

It's true about the good location, but my concern is not so much with putting in a new building as it is getting rid of the old building. I'd be happy if they housed the city government in a warehouse while they dynamited City Hall and built a new one on the same footprint. Or, hell, let them all work in tents on the Plaza from now on. Anything to get rid of that building.

And this is different from any other state . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

How?

Seriously, $5000?

[e9th]

City officials estimated they would charge $5,000 for six months worth of e-mail for each employee

How can it possibly cost $5000 to retrieve six months of email? Does this include hiring scribes to transcribe the mail onto parchment scrolls?

Re:Seriously, $5000?

[budgenator]

That's not that far fetched, you have to have someone go through them, information on Employee contracts have to be redacted as well anything HIPPA or ADA related, on-going negotiations ect. There are a lot of laws concerning what can be made public and a lot of conflicts between different laws.

Re:Seriously, $5000?

[__aasqbs9791]

Well, first you have to read each email to make sure it doesn't make the city look bad, and if it does if you can just rewrite it to sound better (for clarity, of course), and if you can't do that, then you have to delete it, and all this 'proof-reading' takes manpower. And then, of course, there's the bribes that have to be paid...

Re:Seriously, $5000?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are also a lot of attorney-hours that go into what is allowed to be released.

Devil's advocate: If a governing body releases too much info, they may find themselves the target of other lawsuits of breaches of confidentiality (as well as regulations.) So part of the expense is having attorneys on staff to limit parts of the subpoena to what is relevant to the case or FOIA request and no more.

Re:Seriously, $5000?

[jonadab]

I suspect it'd be mostly paper and toner. (What, you think a court would accept something inherently electronic, like email, in electronic form? Haha.)

Re:Seriously, $5000?

[KayElle]

As an actual municipal IT Critter from Massachusetts, I can dump emails in a matter of minutes. However, for a standard public records request, you need to audit by hand each and every email to make sure it doesn't have private information such as personnel records or open contract negotiations in it. That's probably where the cost is. That might be different if it was a subpeona as a judge can just say give us everything, but for standard public records requests, we have to comply with privacy laws. If that's $5k/person, then that doesn't seem reasonable because most users will have little email and nothing with any privacy implications. But for all employees? Or for some big shots like the mayor with thousands of emails? It could be reasonable.

It's a matter of power, not intelligence

[SideOfBacon]

Seems to me that the bigger the city, the more stupid the voters are...

You obviously don't understand how machine politics works. Voters are not dumb:

1. individuals allied with the incumbent receive substantial benefit and thus vote for the incumbent
2. those who are not allied are systematically disenfranchised

It's not a matter of dumb/smart, it's a matter of organized/unorganized. Those who are organized (the incumbent) wield significant power to ensure that those without power have difficulty organizing (and thus threatening their power).

Re:It's a matter of power, not intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdote:

City councilperson was attempting to get everyone in the loft building I used to live in evicted. She was the only person standing in the way of rezoning that building residential (it was commercial, when I lived there). Claimed it going residential would hurt her hispanic constituents.

Two months ago one of her street team kids rang my friend's bell in that building, to make sure they'd vote for her. Of course, they said hell no.

Last weekend, she threw a street fair on my block. Replete with staged musicians, a clown with balloon animals for the kids, etc. Of course, everything was in spanish, and everyone working the fair looked at white people like they were about to infect them with smallpox or something. Not the most friendly bunch.

Especially when the demographic in the neighborhood is shifting rapidly from hispanic to yuppie. I need to get out of this neighborhood.

Re:It's a matter of power, not intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

brooklyn?

Re:It's a matter of power, not intelligence

[ivan256]

That only works with low turn-out or outright election fraud. We don't have the latter, so the answer is "The electorate is dumb". If they were smart they'd go vote.

Re:It's a matter of power, not intelligence

[SideOfBacon]

We do vote, and we vote for the mayor. You still don't understand machine politics: it's not that the city is completely unresponsive (like some suburbs I've lived in), but that's it's only responsive to its base and doesn't address larger systemic issues.

For example, I live in relatively well-to-do Jamaica Plain. If I call the Office of Neighbor Services and say "there is a big pothole outside my house" not only will there be: a live person to take my call, but they will be considerate and listen to my issue and even dispatch a road crew to come patch that pothole probably within 2 weeks. Seriously, they are *good*.

But, is the road crew contractor repairing that pothole a major campaign contributor? Probably. Will there be a police officer (and there has to be an officer) watching them getting paid overtime? Probably. Will I have to call again about that pothole a year from now because the street itself doesn't get repaved and the snowplows will pull that temporary asphalt right up? Probably.

But they filled my simple request quickly and politely. And that is why people vote for the mayor. It's not stupidity, it's that he does a job that's good enough for most people. Is he slowly destroying the city? Of course, but I'll probably have moved by then.

Re:It's a matter of power, not intelligence

[ivan256]

We do vote, and we vote for the mayor.

According to NPR, the turnout for the last mayoral election was 17%. His previous run the turnout was 26%. What was that again about voting?

End users can't enforce retention

[galactic-ac]

I fail to see why it's relevant that an individual end user had only 18 emails when he receives hundreds daily. I would love to have this individual in my organization, less chance of corrupt Outlook .pst files and less to backup from the workstation. Retention policies should have nothing whatsoever to do with what recipients retain in their local mail stores. Retention, compliance, and backup policies are enforced at the server.

Re:End users can't enforce retention

[NotBornYesterday]

Yes. Done at the server. By an admin who answers to a manager who answers to someone who answers to someone who answers to the Mayor. Are you telling me that Menino doesn't know what's going on? "Hmm, those hundreds of emails from yesterday are gone ... I wonder what could have happened."

Re:End users can't enforce retention

[Anonymous Coward]

My old boss regularly had 1000's of emails in his box and complained that connections always took a while. Once I convinced him to move everything into old mail folders by year, he was much happier. But we have incentive to keep old emails- passwords, registration codes, etc. You're exactly right, server side retention is required.

Re:End users can't enforce retention

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. You are correct - retention is an administrative, server-based function and should NEVER depend on the actions of individual users.

I suspect in this case the end user is automatically moving all incoming e-mail to an archive folder, probably via an Outlook rule. People do this to circumvent low limits on mailbox size. Why are the quotas so restrictive? Lack of storage on the server! Where ARE all those old e-mails? Sitting in archive folders on individual PCs (with no backups). How about ex-employees? Where are THEIR e-mails? Probably gone. Recovering these messages would be a real scavenger hunt, which is why the city wants $5000 to make an attempt. The price is partly a reflection of the desperation tactics that would have to be used, combined with an incentive to try and prevent the need to do it.

interesting fact about government in our state.

[NotSoHeavyD3]

The state house (Where they do their business) has a inappropriately (or appropriately name) entrance on the side. It's called "The General Hooker Entrance". (And no, I'm not making that one up. Just google it.) Here's a photo link http://www.madspedersen.com/photos/1267_large.jpg

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a good one.

Question to the exchange sys admins

[bigpat]

Does it reasonably cost $5000 in man hours to retrieve 6 months worth of emails from one persons mailbox in Microsoft Exchange?

Re:Question to the exchange sys admins

[Degrees]

Depends on if they have daily backups that are retained that long. So if there really are 180 tapes that have to be loaded (more like 170, as the most recent tapes are probably still in the library), and each restore takes about one hour of work to do, and the employees involved get paid about $30 per hour, then yes that works out to about $5,000. Where I work, it takes longer than an hour to retrieve a set of tapes because the tapes are sent-off site (you are paying for travel time and mileage), and one has to unload current tapes, do the restore, unload the archive tapes, and reload the current tapes. Then take the archive tapes back to off-site storage. We don't do daily tapes though.

Re:Question to the exchange sys admins

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't you just do them all in one shot, so $5000 total?

Re:Question to the exchange sys admins

[Degrees]

Yes. Someone else pointed out that after the mailbox is restored, the contents have to be vetted by the lawyers, prior to be handed over to the newspaper. So there are more expenses than just the retrieval. $30,000 for five mailboxes does sound a bit high. Not ludicrously high, but high.

false dichotomy

[Anonymous Coward]

there are four possiblities
1. morally reprehsible; does what i like
2. morally reprehensible; doesn't do what i like
3. moral; does what i like
4. moral; doesn't do what i like.

i want option 3.

$30,000 to do the job of a small shell script.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Globe obtained the e-mails of only two employees as a result of its requests, in part because of the cost estimates provided by the Menino administration. City officials estimated they would charge $5,000 for six months worth of e-mail for each employee, for a total cost of $30,000."

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure version 9

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 2006 (Taking effect 2006-12-31, therefore covering 2007 and newer) revision 9 of FRCP says that if one can reasonably be expected to know that the contents of an email are going to be evidence in a court case (Federal Court) then one must not delete the email. If you do delete the email anyway, the Judge is to assume that the email says what the plaintiff says the email says.

You auto-lose the case.

Of course, any case can end up before the Federal Court if either party appeals the judgment up high enough.

FRCP is prevalent enough that Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that says California state government email retention policy is the same as FRCP (with only one or two words different).

Looks like the people of Boston need to file a bunch more suits against the mayor and bankrupt his ass out of office.

FWIW, my local District Attorney's office does the same thing. Essentially they (think they) are above the law, and won't change their behavior until it costs the County a million or two dollars.

Absolutely not...if you intended to recover data

[xC0000005]

The biggest problem is that you have to intend to be able to recover data to begin with. Journaling results in a record set where you basically say "Give me everything From X or To X". If they are really doing a RSG/Recover Mailbox to recover data it's again unlikely that it costs this much, with one caveat - Your organization has to have intended to be able to recover data to start with. That is, if they don't have hardware, they don't have a recovery plan or expertise in this area the first one can be difficult, and usually results in calling support for them to walk you through the process. It's not that it's difficult. It's that you have to do it.

This number sounds designed to scare off requests to me.

If they are hiding something...it WILL be found.

[xC0000005]

Or rather - it can be found. It just depends on how hard you want to look. Let's say that they dont' do full backups nightly (fairly reasonable depending on hardware and a bunch of other factors). Get the last full backup and then you'll have a set of logs from each incremental. Copy that full backup into the RSG and start it up. Exmerge out and that's your baseline. Stop the RSG and copy back the default (I've heard from recovery guys that they use a virtual box and revert). Copy in a set of logs, lather, rinse, repeat. Copy the dumpster crap too - that's the stuff someone hard deleted. That's particularly interesting.

Still think someone's being extra sneaky?

Do what the hardcore recovery people do. Plan it in one log at a time, recover and merge out. (Yes, I've heard of people doing this). Entities journaling this way have to enforce dumpster retention until backup. That way a person can't shift delete away the evidence.

If they have weekly backups, all the deleted email

[brinix]

I work in e-discovery technology related to all sorts of email formats, and I think there might be a lot left to be discovered.

With Exchange, when one hard-deletes (shift-delete or delete from "Deleted Items" folder) an email (plain delete is a soft-delete, which only moves the email to "Deleted Items" folder), the email is not __really__ deleted. It's put in the system dumpter/tombstone. Now the default retention policy of such messages on Exchange server is 7 days, so if they have weekly backup, it's pretty easy to dig out those deleted emails.

I guess now they should hire a e-discovery firm and if they have any email backup tapes, I am sure a lot more emails can be discovered.