My first job was working for the Pennsylvania legislature. Among the many valuable things I learned was advice from a friend who planned to make a career in government: “Never put anything in writing you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times.†In the early 80s, before PCs were commonplace, that was clear, easy to follow advice.
Back in the day, a public record was a public record. They were easy to identify – they were on letterhead, they had date stamps on them, they were cataloged and retrievable even after 100 years in the state library. Not so now. “Official†government communications include email, websites and blogs – all electronic entities that really are public records, even though they have no mass. Maybe that’s why it’s taking so long for some people to believe that government emails are public documents.
Take for example this extraordinary press release from the Department of Justice: On May 31, 2006, two computer staffers of the Pennsylvania state legislature were charged with obstruction of justice for “allegedly engaging in the widespread destruction of e-mail and other electronic evidence, in an attempt to keep this evidence from FBI scrutiny in the course of an ongoing federal investigation.â€
The accompanying affidavit paints a fascinating tale of an allegedly corrupt legislator, staffers trying to keep their jobs by protecting their boss, and the technology and strategies the staff used to try to throw off the FBI. There’s mention of blackmail, plenty of vulgar language and enough intrigue for a made-for-TV movie.
But here’s the odd thing. Though the charge is for obstructing justice (by destroying evidence), I didn’t see that the electronic files were considered –- by either the Justice Department or the alleged conspirators -- a public record. And that’s one possible reason (beyond the obvious one of not getting caught) why the staffers were able to capably destroy so many emails without outcry from the 20 or so people who had their PCs and Blackberries wiped. No one considered that kind of correspondence an official public document. If they really believed emails were official documents, they never would have included compromising info that would have to be destroyed later.
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