Labor Dept. Wanted $1M For E-mail Addresses of Political Appointees

Virtucon writes with this snippet from an Associated Press story as carried by TwinCities.com: "'The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged—but often happens anyway—due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved. The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.' The reason for the $1 million dollar request was to do research including going to backup tapes. Some of the information has been turned over to AP but it still seems that the government just can't get their hands on e-mail addresses for their own people."

Comments

Re:Incompetence

[ShanghaiBill]

These people already *had* official accounts, why would they need a second, undocumented email address?

So they could could engage in private conversations, and feel free to express their true opinions. Eliminating all privacy for public employees might seem like a great idea at first, but it is likely to engender a culture where people toe the official line, and are afraid to report problems or concerns because their comments might later be misconstrued by a journalist or lawyer that is either ignorant or unconcerned about the context.