This whole exercise seems more damaging than constructive, and I don't really like the author's smug tone, as if he deserves praise.
The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
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Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#12I can't tell whether this is a testament to the incompetence of public IT operations or an indictment of public records keeping practice. Maybe both?
Also has a good example of hostile FOIA officers. I have filed about two dozen FOIA requests, and the vast majority were fine, though usually slow. Earlier this year one longstanding request of mine was rejected because they claimed the document I wanted was export controlled. Two months later I sent in an appeal where I showed that the document in question was not export controlled (I filed another FOIA with a separate agency to check), and I suggested that they lied to me. Never got an apology, though they seem to be processing the request for real now.
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#13It's clear they didn't have expertise to do it, and I'm tired of reading people that know way more looking down at others over it and assuming they don't want to comply. If they hiding something and malicious, the end result wouldn't have been to send way too much, but I don't see the author realizing this fast enough.
Agreed. You're putting an overworked, underpaid public servant in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario. They complied with a far reaching request and got told their response was too far reaching? I'd quit my job if faced with a legal minefield like that, especially one not actually related to the job itself
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#14I find the writer to be a bit of a dick in his responses. Yes, the city IT may not be at the same level as Google engineers, but there’s no need to mock their ballpark estimates, and after the mistake there’s no need to be a jerk about it. Be forthright about the error.
Consider being on the other side of this, due to a careless mistake the data for many people is exposed on a random strangers hard drive. Asking for an independent third party verification is reasonable.
Bringing lawyers in the mix was also unnecessary. And if more people follow in the authors actions then the state level FOIA laws may be put at risk over the long term.
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#15I find the writer to be a bit of a dick in his responses. Yes, the city IT may not be at the same level as Google engineers, but there’s no need to mock their ballpark estimates, and after the mistake there’s no need to be a jerk about it. Be forthright about the error. Consider being on the other side of this, due to a careless mistake the data for many people is exposed on a random strangers hard drive. Asking for…
For the ballpark estimate, I think they just wanted for the request to go away by quoting an insanely high price.
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#16> The passive aggression is thick.
From this I can accurately deduce that you really were talking to a person in Seattle. /local-in-joke.
Pretty amazing story; Seattle, collectively, always tends to mean well, but so often they stumble.
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#17I find the writer to be a bit of a dick in his responses. Yes, the city IT may not be at the same level as Google engineers, but there’s no need to mock their ballpark estimates, and after the mistake there’s no need to be a jerk about it. Be forthright about the error. Consider being on the other side of this, due to a careless mistake the data for many people is exposed on a random strangers hard drive. Asking for…
For the ballpark estimate, I think they just wanted for the request to go away by quoting an insanely high price.
It was a reasonable ballpark. Let's say a city prosecutor was working on a organized crime case that involves the FBI and other people.
Based on timing of emails this would leak the list of people working on the case, maybe informants and put them at risk.
We all lost our collective shit when NSA said they're only collecting metadata. Metadata is Data.
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#18Author of article has no background/understanding of the "sunshine" laws in effect in WA. Those laws may (do) explain a lot of why things go this way with any/all FOIA in WA.
Source: 100s of FOIA requests to various WA government agencies.
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#19I'm confused, why was he looking for this information?
He wasn’t, that’s the kicker. They included it “because we have no way to filter the output”. It’s a good read top to bottom :)
Re: The City of Seattle Accidentally Gave Me 32M Emails for $40
#20Interesting read to learn of challenges cities have and what mistakes they make along the way, but the author comes across as defensive and quite arrogant.