...
As a member of the public, you cannot (by defn) communicate privately
with your govt, then, unless you take personal steps to protect the
exchange. For the recipient will archive the unsensitive message. If
Correct. If I send a letter to my Congressperson, the FDA, or any
other governemnt body, it becomes part of the public record. So,
what's new? If I telephone them, a summary of the conversation could
become a record, too.
its sensitive (though unclassified) then you (joe.public) must declare
it so, and protect it. Yes you, not the govt employee. Else you have
given up your right to privacy, which the relevant agency might have
otherwise made available to you.
What right of privacy? So far as I know, I have no such right when
communicating with the gov't.
Put it bluntly, the policy (and the "threat" I allude to) could remove
from the IRS the need for IT to safeguard your electronic tax return,
but pass now the responsibility on to you, should your choose to file
your taxes electronically. This passing of responsibility would be a
social event! Worthy of some debate, perhaps. Now what technology will
Actually, no. The privacy of of tax records is covered by explicit
Federal law.
you all be using to protect all this private interaction with your
govt.?
>In my opinion, the threat/danger is that people have been making
>false-to-facts assumptions all along. If my use of paper clips is
>subject to an outside audit and is part of the public record, why
>should my computer use become suddenly off-limits to the same
>auditors and records?
You are thinking of yourself, as a public servant. What about the other
end, a "private" individual, engaged in conventionally-understood
personal communication?
That's my point. If I'm sending a message to a .gov, .mil, etc. site, I am
by definition not engaging in private communication for which there is such
an expectation.
If I'm sending a message to someone at a .edu or .com site that is
working under a government contract, I don't have such a clear label.
However, if it is a personal message, the recipient should be aware of
this status and be able to tell me a mailbox to use that is not
covered under the contract.
That your student asked you for a job reference over your campus mail
system, and you replied that you have chosen to decline for reason X
(and the mail exchange used is archived given you all used govt
equipment), is now a matter of public record. This may turn out to be
bad for Fred(a); who knows?
Again, no. Covered by student data privacy laws.
If an employee asks me for a reference and I supply it (via phone,
letter, e-mail, etc.), it becomes part of the employee's employment
record and has the same status as the rest of that data (exact status
varies, so I'm not giving a blanket yes or no).
Again, use of e-mail should not make a material difference.
...
Craig