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In Mississippi, Gov't Text Messages Are Officially Public Records
New submitter Chris Elkins (3620071) writes "Text messages [by public officials about government business] are now officially considered public records. An investigative reporter fought for access to what he believed were public records. He took his fight to the state and won. Mississippi open government and transparency advocates view this unanimous commission opinion as precedent-setting for all government bodies and public officials in the state."
over the Republicans! Those people constantly send racist text messages back and forth, like most old white people, so it's great to see that they're either going to have to stop or face time in prison. This is a huge fucking win.
How do we keep all the niggers out of our white schools?
Blame the Mexicans.
Segregation and cousin fucking today. Segregation and cousin fucking forever!!!
In other news, sales of low-end prepaid phones in MS strangely doubled in recent days.
The political class is adept at skirting these laws and going unpunished.
The Government communicates with the Illuminati through dental implants.
old 49-states quote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
The only viable alternative would be to explicitly require that government personnel use only government supplied mechanisms during performance of their appointed duties. If a government official is discussing government business, We The People have a right to know everything (unclassified) which is said by our government officials regarding the conduct of our government's business. Either use government supplied resources (neatly avoiding privacy issues) or get used to the fact that any public inquiry can reasonably be expected to expose more than public information to public scrutiny.
Said no politician ever.
The end result of this will be: The state decides it's too expensive to track and just disables text messaging on all their service plans.
time to strike back with a final solution!
Public officials and government bodies in Mississippi have been breaking the law for a long time. Public records have retention schedules and archiving requirements, but these officials haven't been retaining and archiving text messages, which are public records. They don't currently have the technology or processes in place to handle this nor have they budgeted funds for this. They should have taken the law more seriously and adapted to open government sooner because now they have to scramble to make this change and pay for it.
Either way, this is a big deal. If Mississippi can make this progress, all states can! This is a win for Open Government!
If the work is done for the agency, then it's public record.
This is why I don't use my personal devices for any government business.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What technology exists to capture, archive, and retain text messages? How will local governments comply with this?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
.... what Mississippi said.
When the whole phone tapping scandal kicked off royally, was I the only one thinking "Shouldn't they be discussing our best interests anyway? And if they are then what's the fuss about"? As someone said before me, government officials should be more transparent if anything -phone records, taxes they pay, property they own -BRING IT ON.
Death comes to those who wait.
In that they keep their elected officials & such on that kind of leash. Correct me if I am wrong if ANY of you reading think that it's a bad thing to do. They are, after all, on taxpayer time and equipment + their payrolls we pay for.
APK