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Open Gov't Advocates Fear that Private Messaging Apps Are Being Misused by Public Officials To Conduct Business in Secret (pbs.org)
The proliferation of digital tools that make text and email messages vanish may be welcome to Americans seeking to guard their privacy. But open government advocates fear they are being misused by public officials to conduct business in secret and evade transparency laws. From a report: Whether communications on those platforms should be part of the public record is a growing but unsettled debate in states across the country. Updates to transparency laws lag behind rapid technological advances, and the public and private personas of state officials overlap on private smartphones and social media accounts. "Those kind of technologies literally undermine, through the technology itself, state open government laws and policies," said Daniel Bevarly, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition. "And they come on top of the misuse of other technologies, like people using their own private email and cellphones to conduct business." Some government officials have argued that public employees should be free to communicate on private, non-governmental cellphones and social media platforms without triggering open records requirements.
We have the government saying encryption is thwarting their efforts to gather information on people, while at the same time (some) government folks are saying it's perfectly reasonable for them to use apps which thwart the public's effort to gather information on them.
Yes, because government is accountable to the people, not the other way around.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
This isn't me wanting to spy on my neighbor, but not wanting my neighbor to spy on me. This is the relationship between a people and their government, which is by it's very nature, asymmetrical.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
But open government advocates fear they are being misused by public officials to conduct business in secret and evade transparency laws.
Before the digital age, the government employees would have meetings in person and just not write down what was said. That doesn't make restaurants and bars somehow complicit or instrumental in government officials' malfeasance.
Face it, there is generally a de facto expectation that private meetings and discussions in person are not automatically subject to transparency requirements. I mean, should a government official be required to record every single meal they have and with whom and what, if anything, was discussed?
Granted, there is a blurring of the lines with things like Twitter. Everyone wondered whether President Obama would blur that line, though he did a very good job separating himself from his personal social media presence once he became president. On the other hand, President Trump has not done the same and Hillary Clinton most definitely acted wrongly with her private email setup (she was not the only, but by far the most willful and egregious example). In any event, the discussion needs to be had because of the nature of social media and other technological means of communication.
Ever since the founding of the nation, everyone has had conflicting agendas.
Personal, business, family, religion, township, state, nation - they all have different optimal outcomes.
Folks become politicians because they think they can work out something that will work for most, if not all of those levels - and yeah, often, those motivations are corrupt.
Like in science though - the answer should be that matching up to reality should be the goalstick - and conflicting motivations should bow towards that.
The problem is that when we allow motivations to become too corrupt, reality itself becomes the enemy of those motivations.
Open government is an important motivation because it prevents folks from straying too far too long from being compared with reality.
That's the role of the press in recent centuries - to take conflicting biases, and hold them against reality, one story at a time. Even in the yellow journalism eras, and now in the Fox news and social media era - it made it difficult to operate too far away from reality as a politician.
But it's not an infinite effect - it can be washed away by enough motivation against reality.
And to folks that love science and honest study of reality, it's something of a disgusting transformation of a nation.
Especially in the sense of what's going to happen when reality reasserts itself after the current illusion wears thin.
Ryan Fenton
No, this is wanting governments to follow the laws they passed. Open government laws require that records are kept and trying to get around that is illegal.
What we need are stronger punishments for this activity as we already have decided that these acts are against the law.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Throw away everything except:
Public Officials Conduct Business
HOW isn't important.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
People who enter public service must be held to a different standard. They are being temporarily given a large amount of power over other citizens along with the opportunity to personally profit by that power. That requires trust, and the only way to assure trust is making all their communications and actions subject to public review.
If someone doesn't like that, fine. They don't have to be a public servant, they can be a private citizen like everyone else. Traditionally, going into politics was understood to be a sacrifice, rather than a lifelong career, so giving up certain things was expected.
Exactly, the US government is expressly empowered by the people to act for the people, in specific ways. We don't have the Divine Right of Kings here.
The Constitution explicitly delegates certain specific powers to the federal government, and reserves all other powers to the states and the people. Powers are preserved with the people because that's where they come from. Washington politicians work for us, at our pleasure not the other way around.
Until we get public officials that don't believe Microsoft Support wants them to install VNC on their computer to resolve a virus issue, this will be continue to be done for us at no charge by benevolent third parties.
--- Mercutio was right.
I concur. Jail plus a lifetime ban on participating in politics or lobbying. I think that last bit would dissuade a lot of politicians planning to move to the lucrative lobbying sector after they get out of office.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Any Official caught using said systems to circumvent the rules ( by accident or intentionally ) are to be removed
from office immediately. None of this " I didn't know " bullshit.
They are to be stripped of any retirement or pension benefits they have accrued, any assets they own in any form
are to be confiscated and they are to be blacklisted from holding any office. In addition, no book deals, no " speaking
fees ", no movie deals, nothing about their period where they held an elected position can be utilized to make money.
( All of this bullshit is merely bribery delayed to avoid suspicion while in office anyway )
Offer a high dollar reward for information / evidence of an Official engaging in such activities and done.
They'll be afraid to talk to anyone out of fear of being turned in for said reward.
In other words, make the punishment severe enough and they will shy away from such conduct all on their own.
If this seems unfair, these folks are in heightened positions of power. As such, they SHOULD be held to a higher standard
than the common citizen. As such, the price for abusing that power should also come with heavier penalties.
Fear that it is being abused? Hasn't it been uncovered already?
DID YOU KNOW:
That the Constitution holds more authority than the president?
politicians who refuse corporate PAC money
Including Hillary, Bernie, Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Mike Dukakis, etc and so on and so on.
If you're not condemning Democrats along with Republicans, you are a shill and liar.
Do you seriously think all of that?
You do realize the one tax return they got was from him. He leaked it. Turns out he pays more in taxes than all of the rest put together.
If anything we now have a president the media is willing to pay attention to. Instead of slurping his jizz. If you think 'your team' is any better *think* *again*. They are *all* corrupt with a very small handful not being so. The non-corrupt ones you can identify by how they do not always vote with the crowd. This 'corrupt admin' has shown exactly how corrupt it is top to bottom. You have ignored it because of your bias. Has it occurred to you that he now sits upon a mountain of 'classified' information? That shows exactly how corrupt it is and he is calling them out on it? Think your bias is not being manipulated? Think back to before he was elected. Then walk your memory forward on all of the manufactured scandals. How pretty much all of them have turned out to be false. How all of them use the same rhetoric. How all of them have the same nay-sayers saying nay? How at NO point have the democrats stepped up to the plate and said 'hey lets work with him'. Do you not find that interesting? Maybe you can 'resist' more.
I agree, and I think the problem is that the public (media?) has knee-jerk responses to what looks like misuse of funds without really paying attention to the relative scale. I remember the complaints when a GSA conference had an expensive sushi dinner in Las Vegas - when the per-person cost wasn't actually out of line with typical conference food. Yet that got as much media attention as 10s of billions of overruns on a F35 project, and those got more attention that the question of whether a multi $100B fighter plane project made any sense in the first place.
The public / media will jump all over a government official who makes an unguarded comment that some find offensive, but not pay nearly so much attention to someone who always is careful to use the right words, but who's policies cause widespread harm to the same group.
It creates a difficult situation where there is good reason for complete government transparency, but where detailed public scrutiny can result in a wild misdirection of public concerns.
Water wet!
Politicians dishonest, corrupt shysters!
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I fear that government officials are using the telephone and the USPS to cheat, lie, steal and otherwise abuse the system they are supposed to be supporting. I think messaging apps are just the latest tool in the hands of some of the worst crooks on the planet, our elected officials. I could of course be wrong, but I'd not bet my lunch money on it.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Oh, I think public servants also need to be allowed the right of being private citizens when they don't work, except for the few positions that really are 24/7, like president.
But the lines between the two need to be fairly firm - a private encrypted e-mail to your cousin is one thing, and a "private" encrypted e-mail to your cousin who runs a company that bids on government business is a different thing.
Good luck getting politicians to pass a law that restricts the political class
is that it's owned lock, stock & barrel by the same mega-corporations that are buying off politicians.
I just read an article talking about "moderate" Democrats (e.g. the right wing) opposing Bernie Sanders and it made the point that single payer health care is popular but threw in the phrase "government run". Bernie and his ilk aren't talking about government run-healthcare. Nobody except a very tiny number of loons is (roughly the same as the number of Republicans talking about expelling black Americans and fewer than the number of Republicans in favor of child labor). Single Payer != Government Run, as anyone in Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands or Sweden will tell you.
When I talk about a right wing media bias this is what I mean.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
There is no such law. You're just another leftie who doesn't let the facts get it the way and why anybody would listen to YOU is beyond me.
Yeah, because it wasn't like HIllary had a private email server with 30,000 government emails on them or anything....
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
everyone knew exactly how Hilary was corrupt. The emails didn't matter. Her corruption was right out in the open. We knew she gave Wallstreet speeches for money. We knew she sold access to the state department, we knew her foundation was sketchy and we knew she manipulated the DCC to stop Bernie. All the emails did was fill in a few blanks. The email servers we there not to hide corruption, there were to keep her opponents from knowing her strategies.
We know our public officials are corrupt because they're making no real effort to hide it. We need a litmus test for all politicians. If you take corporate & PAC money you don't get elected. You don't even make it past primary season. Nobody, and I mean nobody, can serve two masters.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"Public Officials" should NOT BE using anything but agency issued electronic devices while conducting themselves as agents of said agencies. Period.
Unless, of course, you are Secretary of State, right?
Ken
DID YOU KNOW:
That the Constitution holds more authority than the president?
At the moment.
they really seem to like 'three strikes' type laws. How about 3 strikes and they remove you from office.
is for public officials to be forced to use "private" apps that include a backdoor, like the fibbies want. Soon as these "public" oficials realize that not only can some pimple farm in Sumfukistan access that backdoor, but so can some reporter looking for a story, maybe things will change.
Nahh, I'm kidding myself. Soon as they realize the plebes can access the security backdoor they'll demand encryption without that backdoor. Only available to them of course, the plebes don't need that kind of privacy.
"People who enter public service must be held to a different standard"
;)
They are held to a different standard. Laws and regulations never apply to them!
Just my 2 cents
The last US Civil War was not about slavery it was about states rights. At the time the decision to declare slavery illegal at the federal level was just one example of the federal government trying to dictate laws that the states believed was a matter to decided at the state by state level.
The US Civil War was over the right of States to secede, and the States that seceded made it very clear that the "State's Right" over which they seceded was the right of a State to permit slavery.
Most public servants are already using various technical methods and tools to manage and hide their illegal activities.
;)
Talking about closing the barn door now is irreverent the cows are already out of the barn!
Just my 2 cents
The US Civil War was over the right of States to secede, and the States that seceded made it very clear that the "State's Right" over which they seceded was the right of a State to permit slavery.
No, the US Civil War was about States rights which is only tangentially related to succession at best.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Half of the country voted for Hillary Clinton
No, about 20% of the country voted for Hillary Clinton - nearly 66 Million voters voted for HRC, but the population of the country is closer to 330 Million.
More voting-age Americans chose not to vote in 2016 than voted in the election.
Ken
Why does the Department of Education need a SWAT team?
Ken
Encrypted data is not information.
But a publicly elected official should go to jail for keeping secrets from the people who elected him or her.
I concur. Jail plus a lifetime ban on participating in politics or lobbying. I think that last bit would dissuade a lot of politicians planning to move to the lucrative lobbying sector after they get out of office.
How would you define lobbying in a way that wouldn't be full of loopholes? And how could that possibly be enforced?
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Encrypted data is not information.
As long as you know the key, it is.
It's only random bits (and therefore, not information, if you've forgotten the key)
DID YOU KNOW:
The American people now beg their government for limited access to their "inalienable rights?"
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Government officials have been refining their tactics in this arena since Nixon hung himself with those tapes.
If it isn't one thing it will be another. Or, in other words, it's not the technology that creates the clandestine act, and even without it, the clandestine acts will continue. Focusing on the tech is another way to scapegoat the whole conversation and avoid the hard questions about how to eliminate this kind of behavior by our elected officials.
Sadly, I get the feeling that partisan people are in favor of this kind of behavior, as most of them see government as a blunt instrument with which to strike at the heads of anyone who believes differently than they do.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Define lobbying in a way without loopholes?
Easy.
If you talk to a politician about an issue that is important to you it's legal.
If somebody pays you to talk to a politician about anything you should both go to jail.
Make that the law and 95% of our troubles in the U.S. would go away.
The law already exists. Enforce it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It is wrong in both instances. Enforce the law in all circumstances.
Oh, and it has been done before.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
That's the point. Encrypted data is not information. Decrypted data is. If the government is collecting encrypted data then they are, by definition, not collecting information. It only becomes information once they have the ability to decrypt it.
Depends on your definition of "information". For example, what comes out of an evaporating black hole is information. That we don't understand it makes it analogous to encrypted data...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
Exactly, the US government is expressly empowered by the people to act for the people, in specific ways. We don't have the Divine Right of Kings here.
At this point, I'm pretty sure that that's exactly what politicians think now. Especially the career ones.
... and less than that 20% voted for the scary clown that is now in the Whitehouse.
I sure hope that the roughly 60% that didn't vote learned their lesson.
Do you mean the lesson that they were right about not having a choice as shown by what the DNC did to Bernie Sanders?
or read as : we need to revoke that damned encryption in the name of what about the people ... that also goes both ways :)
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?