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.

Comments

Ironic, isn't it?

[quonset]

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.

Re:You can’t have it both ways

[mrbester]

Yes, because government is accountable to the people, not the other way around.

Re:You can’t have it both ways

[king neckbeard]

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.

Before the digital age ...

[El Cubano]

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.

Re:Before the digital age ...

[ShanghaiBill]

There's nothing illegal about a government official buying a burner phone to call people with.

But it is illegal to use that phone for government business.

...and they're correct.

[RyanFenton]

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

Re:You can’t have it both ways

[Holi]

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.

Exactly. The states and people delegated power to

[raymorris]

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.

Like a private email server?

[jfdavis668]

Fear that it is being abused? Hasn't it been uncovered already?

Odd

[Archfeld]

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.

Re:You can’t have it both ways

[arth1]

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.

You're missing the point entirely

[rsilvergun]

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.