UK Ministers' Private Communications Subject To Freedom of Information Act

Techmeology writes "Emails and texts sent from UK ministers' private accounts could be subject to the Freedom of Information Act, which means copies could be requested by members of the public. New guidelines to be released by the government say that the key factor is 'the nature of the information and not the format.' This development comes amid a two year dispute caused when a newspaper used the act to obtain and publish an email sent from the education minister's private email address."

Comments

Good deal

[fustakrakich]

Give them the same privacy they want to allow the rest of us.. Actually they should have much less when considering the power they are given. Seems fair.

Re:Good deal

[fustakrakich]

Do you really want celebrity-types running the country?

Are you saying we don't have precisely that now? Besides, I read about plenty of celebrities crying about their privacy all the time. I.m just calling for equal treatment, or an exchange (give up your privacy, amongst other things, for authority).

How does requesting work?

[wisnoskij]

Unless some agency catalogues and publishes all document titles, at least, how would you go about requesting something you know nothing about.
Can you just ask for any email to/from a particular address, or any email with a certain keyword?

Slightly misleading headline

[julian67]

From the article:

"New government guidance will say the act relates to "the nature of the information and not the format"

Which means that communications re government business will fall under the Freedom of Information Act, that is they will be discoverable, regardless of the medium of transmission/storage. Personal exchanges will remain private.

This doesn't mean that anyone gets to read ministers' personal/domestic/private sms or emails /partners but it does mean that ministers can't hide official business under unofficial accounts.

Another benefit is that it might discourage ministers/officials conducting business on accounts which are hosted by potentially insecure and definitely unaccountable webmail providers, many of which would be storing data and hosting services outside the UK.

Politicians

[p0p0]

It always seemed odd to me how much money politicians make and how much more rights they seem to have than us. I've always thought it would be neat if to become a politician, all personal information would be made public, all future communications made public, and their income maxed at the national average. None of this $100,000+ a year bollocks.

Now there are lots of holes in my idea, but I feel like it would force politicians to be more honest about what they were doing. It would bring them back down to Earth at the very least and bring the more dishonest ones to the front to be judged. But such a large amount of information would probably just flood over the relevant information with useless facts about each and every politician, and verification would be almost impossible.

Nice to imagine though, that politicians do what they do because it is right and they want to help instead of just taking bribes from lobbyists and corporations.

Re:Politicians

[queazocotal]

A hard cap on salary at the average would have a simple effect.
Only rich people would become politicians.
They would be even more likely to 'suffer' for a short while, while lining up contacts for future lucrative contracts in industry.

Re:Politicians

[Kittenman]

It always seemed odd to me how much money politicians make

You gotta be kidding. In what sense do they make too much money? Almost any politician would make far more in the private sector.

I happen to know a cadre of senior pundits with high end connections around here and all of them would have to take a pay cut if they were to become members of cabinet.

If you pay low salaries to politicians you are assured to get one of four things:

- Mediocre people - Power hungry egomaniacs - Corrupt people - Millionaires

and to be fair, far behind the four above you get a fifth option, which happens ever so rarely:

- people who care

Tut. Ancient Greece used to not pay people in public office at all. I don't think the ancient Romans did either (though there were other benefits...). The Greeks used to do it as part of their civic duty.

Actually that's an idea - pay public servants the same rate as us plebs get paid for jury service...

Re:Old stuff in most of the USA

[Nerdfest]

Perhaps it will wake them up a little to the privacy violating laws they've been pushing on the people they're supposed to represent.