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FCC Is Not Complying With Freedom of Information Act Requests, Alleges Lawsuit (arstechnica.com)
burtosis writes: The FCC is being sued for failure to turn over documents related to "correspondence, e-mails, telephone call logs, calendar entries, meeting agendas," between chairman Ajit or his staff and ISPs. Given the FCCs recent transparency issues, which appear to be directly ignoring the vast majority of feedback from Americans that are pro net neutrality, a nonprofit group called American Oversight is trying to force the real conversations the FCC is holding into public view. They are also asking for any communications with the media, Congress, and congressional staff. Two extensions for missed deadlines have been given, but the third extension was denied on July 24th. The FCC also ignored a FOiA request by Ars for the DDoS attack during the public comment period on net neutrality. With the current administration's attitude toward transparency and catering only to the largest corporate donors, will the American people have any meaningful influence in how the country is run anymore?
"With the current administration's attitude toward transparency and catering only to the largest corporate donors, will the American people have any meaningful influence in how the country is run anymore?"
Uh, current administration?
Can someone tell me when the last time any administration was completely transparent and somehow didn't cater to their largest corporate donors? For fucks sake, this has been going on so long it's now considered an American tradition. Not even you great grandfather remembers a time when this wasn't true.
The American People became irrelevant long ago.
have they ever?
The solution is simple: just don't record in meeting minutes or any fashion whatsoever the things you don't want the public to know about.
That seems like a strange "solution"
What you're saying is "the way to avoid committing a crime, is to commit a crime".
Why would he comply?
He has a lot to lose if it were to be made completely public.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
who in their right mind does not do a post mortem or at least send a email (OOB) when their infrastructure is suffering from what you might call a DDOS
under american law would they have to turn over records to prove they didnt send anything ?
John
Yep... That's exactly what he said...
Well, what he said was to not keep RECORDS by not putting anything into writing where it is subject to FOIA laws. This is EXACTLY the reason that some think Hillary did this "Private E-mail server" mistake, it was an effort to keep E-mail conversations from being subject to FOIA requests (or that's how some see it). The problem for Hillary is that she kept all these old E-mails around instead of routinely trashing them (mistake 2), then she didn't just turn them all over when they were requested (mistake 3) for some reason I cannot imagine...Oh well, her loss, literally...
Businesses do this kind of thing all the time. Like my company's default E-mail retention policy of 14 days. Crazy as it sounds, they do this for liability reasons (as well as limiting server space). Record retention policies are usually about limiting legal liability in the case of a lawsuit. "Oh, you want the E-mail from 30 days ago with that court order? Sorry, we only have 14 days worth due to our records retention policy..."
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Among that supposed smoking-gun treasure trove of information you want, you might find things that you didn't want to know about.
It's almost time to vote from the rooftops
Aren't you the ones who claimed that Trump would change all that ? That your beloved peodophile with the orange top would change everything, that he would make america great again ?
Where's the change ? Are you still going to find ways to blame the democrats again, despite a republican president, a republican senate and a republican house ?
Of course you will. You guys are simply just that pathetic.
then [Hillary] didn't just turn them all over when they were requested
Except she did turn over everything relevant. Since there were intermingled emails, turning over everything was not necessary, no matter how it was painted or looked like. This doesn't mean her email use wasn't a huge error in judgement.
Like my company's default E-mail retention policy of 14 days. Crazy as it sounds, they do this for liability reasons (as well as limiting server space). Record retention policies are usually about limiting legal liability in the case of a lawsuit. "Oh, you want the E-mail from 30 days ago with that court order? Sorry, we only have 14 days worth due to our records retention policy..."
I'm not sure how that would fly should you actually go to court. You're required to keep certain types of documents for far longer than 14 days, whether they are in email or not.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
"With the current administration's attitude toward transparency and catering only to the largest corporate donors, will the American people have any meaningful influence in how the country is run anymore?"
You seem to think this is a new phenomena but the American people DID NOT have meaningful influence with the previous administration or the one before that or the one before that, and so on...
I don't know about him but you will be pissed when Comcast or time warner charge $10 a month extra so you can stream from fox. Don't think that will happen? Both own the "fake" news and not fox so they can make a Devine stream that forces you to pay and since theirs travels on their network it is free.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
then [Hillary] didn't just turn them all over when they were requested
Except she did turn over everything relevant. .
I'm going to stop you right there because the rest is pointless if you don't get this.
IF you receive a court order to turn over your E-mail, YOU don't get to pick and choose what is turned over. It ALL goes, regardless of if you think they are relevant or not. You and your lawyers do NOT get to sort them out and filter them in any way. She was legally required to turn over ALL the E-mails she had when the order was received, not a filtered subset. Had she destroyed them BEFORE she reasonably knew they where under a court order, she'd be in the clear from the court order's perspective. However, her sidestepping of the FOIA laws by using a private server to do official State Department business would remain an issue for her.
Since she turned over all "relevant" E-mails, we have found that a couple thousand of them where most decidedly work related where not provided though they where sent and received on this server. They where recovered from other accounts from other servers to which they were sent or received from and obviously came from Clinton's server. Further, we have discovered classified (at the time, and after the fact) information which was improperly sent over her server despite her claims to have not sent or received classified content... Based on this, I simply don't believe her claims..
My point here is that if you routinely destroy records, documents, Email and other things like this, you cannot be held in contempt for not producing records which you destroyed BEFORE becoming aware of a possible court order to produce them. It's a good idea to do this from a legal perspective too, because it limits your liability exposure for past events (should someone decide to file suit at a later date). I was using Clinton as an example of why you might want to do this.
All this does NOT imply that you shouldn't keep records. Sometimes there are legal and business reasons to KEEP them around. However, smart folks routinely destroy records once there is no legal or business reason to keep them.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
IF you receive a court order to turn over your E-mail, YOU don't get to pick and choose what is turned over.
I've no idea what any court order said in the specific case you're talking about, but in general what you've said here is clearly bad advice. What you have to turn over on receiving a court order will depend on what the order says. It is incredibly unlikely to just say "your email", it might for example say "all emails in your possession", in which case your advice is probably reasonable (but seriously, refer to a lawyer not to some random idiot on Slashdot) or it might say "all emails relating to subject X" or "all emails received between dates A and B" etc., in which case it is appropriate to apply discrimination in which ones you hand over.
The problem of course is that we're expected to take her/her people's word for it that she turned over everything relevant. Whereas if she did commit a crime, she'd have to be pretty stupid to then turn over the evidence when given the opportunity to censor it out. Unless the crime were so minor that the obstruction of justice penalties, weighted by the probability of getting caught, would be considerably more severe.
>You're required to keep certain types of documents for far longer than 14 days, whether they are in email or not.
Again though, I suspect there's a very cynical risk-calculation going on. If they know that they're engaging in shady dealings, then the penalties for not retaining the required documentation are likely to be far less severe than those for being caught red-handed in the crime. Especially since record-retention policies are likely to result in penalties against the corporation (i.e. a fine against the corporate coffers, and maybe somebody loses their job as a result) while criminal activity would result in fines and/or imprisonment of the criminals themselves.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
> In general, you don't want the public to know what goes in to making the sausage because it's kind of disgusting.
I'm quite ok with how sausage is made. If you're disgusted by it, you might want to examine why.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Citation needed. Badly...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Do what happens to anyone else when they disobey a court order. Send in the US Marshalls (FOI go through federal court I believe) and arrest everyone there and throw them in jail for a week for contempt of court. Then haul them before the judge and let them explain how they are going to meet the FOI and give them a week to do it. If they don't do it or make good faith progress, throw them back in jail and lose the key. Also revoke any position they hold for failure to discharge their office. That may happen automatically if they are charged and convicted of contempt of court.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Actually, the current administration is the most transparent in decades. The last administration was the least transparent based on actual facts and historical evidence (as opposed to liberal propaganda). Furthermore, the current ADMINISTRATION is populist in most of it's positions, as opposed to the Republican party in general who is much more pro business as you indicated.
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Except she did turn over everything relevant. .
I'm going to stop you right there because the rest is pointless if you don't get this.
IF you receive a court order to turn over your E-mail, YOU don't get to pick and choose what is turned over. It ALL goes, regardless of if you think they are relevant or not. You and your lawyers do NOT get to sort them out and filter them in any way. She was legally required to turn over ALL the E-mails she had when the order was received, not a filtered subset. Had she destroyed them BEFORE she reasonably knew they where under a court order, she'd be in the clear from the court order's perspective.
OK, the first part was that she deleted emails in 2014 after turning over related emails to the State dept, well before the first subpoena in Mar 2015. Which was specifically limited to items related to Libya:
So no, she didn't have to turn over her entire email set and she could and should have filtered them to meet the subpoena. Now, you can speculate all you want, but unless you have proof somewhere that she had copies of any relevant emails that may have turned up, unsurprisingly, in state dept email servers, then you're just blowing hot air.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The problem of course is that we're expected to take her/her people's word for it that she turned over everything relevant. Whereas if she did commit a crime, she'd have to be pretty stupid to then turn over the evidence when given the opportunity to censor it out.
Do you have any proof that any email of consequence from her was found on any other server? You do realize there's always 2 sources for emails when 1 is a "private" email server?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
No, I have no proof - what sort of idiot would come forth with proof that they engaged in illegal activities with her? That would pretty much guarantee that no other politician would ever engage in such lucrative deals with them in the future.
I assume she engaged in illegal activities because she is a politician, and that seems to be the safe default assumption. Doubly so for those who become rich - you don't get rich on a Senator's salary, or even a President's. (How do you recognize an honest politician? They stay bought.)
Of course the alternative in the general election was an obviously thoroughly corrupt and generally vile businessman, so if there had been any chance of my state going to Donald Dreck I would have voted for her anyway.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I too despise Hillary. I despise Hilter, err, Trump, more.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.