[Vision2020] Close that Loophole!

[Tom Hansen]

Troopergate is far from over.

>From the Anchorage Daily News at:

http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/552784.html

-------------------------------------------------------

Judge orders Palin administration to preserve e-mails
PRIVATE ACCOUNTS: Any dealing with state business will have to be 
retrieved.

By LISA DEMER
ldemer at adn.com

(10/11/08 02:13:56) 
An Anchorage judge on Friday ordered Gov. Sarah Palin and others in her 
office to retrieve and preserve any e-mails from private accounts that 
concern state business.

The ruling came in a lawsuit against Palin -- the GOP vice presidential 
nominee -- filed by Andree McLeod, an Anchorage activist and former state 
worker. 

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Craig Stowers called the case "important."

The state is bustling to comply but first has to figure out what e-mails 
still exist, said Mike Mitchell, assistant attorney general.

"We entered into the hearing ... willing to work to preserve those e-mails 
that do relate to state business that may have been sent to or from 
private accounts, to the extent they can be preserved at this point," 
Mitchell said.

The e-mails need to be retrieved from the private e-mail businesses, 
brought into the state system, and released "as appropriate under the 
public records act," Mitchell said.

The case is one of the first in the nation addressing how 20th-century 
public records laws apply to 21st-century technology like BlackBerrys, he 
said.

McLeod said state workers generally use the state system because it is 
more secure, and e-mails are then available for archiving and for public 
records requests.

"For the governor not to have done so is beyond my understanding," McLeod 
said. "The only thing I can figure out is yeah, she wanted to keep things 
secret."

Palin had at least two Yahoo e-mail accounts and one other private e-mail 
account. The McCain-Palin campaign said her Yahoo accounts were canceled 
in September after a hacker broke into one of them, posting screen shots 
of her inbox and a couple of messages onto a publicly available Web site. 
A Tennessee college student has been charged with accessing her account 
without authorization.

Web-based services like Yahoo are inherently more vulnerable to hacking 
than secure business or government services, experts have said.

In addition, an aide, Frank Bailey, helped set up another private e-mail 
system this spring for Palin and her closest insiders, according to a 
Washington Post story. In the story, Bailey denied doing so.

Mitchell told the judge on Friday that Palin no longer uses any private 
accounts for state business. But there's been no directive for the rest of 
her staff to do the same, said Sharon Leighow, a spokeswoman for the 
governor.

It's not clear how widespread the practice of using private accounts for 
public work has been in the Palin administration. Close to 90 people have 
worked in the governor's office since Palin took office in December 2006, 
counting those in the Office of Management and Budget and the lieutenant 
governor's office. Few have used private e-mail, Leighow said.

McLeod earlier this year requested copies of e-mails from two Palin aides 
and discovered that the governor routinely used a private e-mail account 
for public business. She also found that the aides, Bailey and Ivy Frye, 
at times used private e-mail accounts for state work as well.

On Oct. 1, McLeod sued Palin and the governor's office to force 
preservation of the e-mails. She also filed a request for all of Palin's e-
mails concerning state business since taking office, no matter what e-mail 
account was used, as well as e-mails from Palin's husband, Todd.

Under the judge's order, the governor's office must preserve all e-mails 
to or from private accounts of her staff between Dec. 4, 2006, and 
whenever the litigation concludes "whose content relates in any way to the 
conduct of official business of the state of Alaska."

In addition, Palin and her staff were ordered "to immediately undertake 
efforts" to retrieve e-mails and attachments that "Yahoo and other 
Internet companies have intentionally or automatically deleted."

Mitchell said he'll work with the governor's office and technical support 
staff to figure out how to pursue those e-mails. 

According to Yahoo, once a user deletes an e-mail, "the actual message 
content may take a couple of days to a couple of months to be completely 
eliminated from our storage facilities."

Palin earlier turned over e-mails from her Yahoo accounts to the state 
Department of Law, according to Meghan Stapleton, a spokeswoman for the 
McCain-Palin campaign. But it wasn't clear Friday afternoon how many were 
part of that.

Meanwhile, everyone in the governor's office was e-mailed a copy of the 
judge's order on Friday and asked to comply with it, according to the 
governor's administrative director.

McLeod said she was pleased with the ruling. "I think finally someone 
understood the nature of what is going on here." 

-------------------------------------------------------

Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

> Let's hope this is carefully monitored in light of the evidence that 
Palin
> used personal email accounts for state business specifically to avoid
> official public records requests.
> 
> http://www.adn.com/opinion/view/story/554290.html
> 
> Close that loophole
> A victory for public access to official state records
> 
> Published: October 12th, 2008 09:22 PM
> Last Modified: October 12th, 2008 11:32 PM
> 
> State Superior Court Judge Craig Stowers confirmed the obvious Friday. He
> ruled that e-mails sent or received through Gov. Sarah Palin's personal
> e-mail accounts are public records if they concern official state 
business.
> 
> That's a victory for Andree McLeod, a Republican activist and former 
state
> employee who pressed the freedom of information case. Gov. Palin contends
> McLeod is disgruntled because she didn't get a job in the Palin
> administration.
> 
> Her potential self-interest aside, Ms. McLeod won a victory for all 
Alaskans
> with her case. The state's public records law would be almost 
meaningless if
> officials could circumvent it by using their personal e-mail accounts. 
> 
> Gov. Palin made heavy use of personal e-mail for state business, until a
> hacker broke into one of them. Because those personal e-mails fall 
outside
> the state's official archiving and retrieval system, some of them may be
> lost forever. 
> 
> That would be unacceptable. State e-mail business has to be conducted in 
a
> way that preserves all official state e-mails and makes them available 
for
> public disclosure as the law provides.
> 
> Judge Stowers declined to ban the use of personal e-mail accounts for
> official state business. That call may be acceptable -- as long as the 
state
> can ensure the e-mails are properly saved and made accessible. 
> 
> Judge Stowers should keep a close eye on what e-mails the state is able 
to
> retrieve for Ms. McLeod's case. If there are any gaps, the judge should
> require the state to arrange a system that ensures official state 
business
> e-mails are fully preserved.
> 
> BOTTOM LINE: State officials can't avoid the public records law by doing
> state business on personal e-mail accounts. 
> 
> 
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"Jesus was a community organizer and Poncius Pilate was a governor."

- Marilyn Trail, sister of Representative Tom trail (September 8, 2008)

----

"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


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