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I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

independent.co.uk

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Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#171

Post by bhelkey »

codeulike wrote: post #40
GordonS wrote: post #20

> I was able to ask my PhD college, and several other institutions, to see all emails in which my name appeared in either the subject line or the body of the email Hmm, I don't think I like this, and I don't understand how the GDPR allows you to do this. While I understand that stored emails that mention you are technically "data about you", I wouldn't consider them "your data". Emails are a form of personal communic…

Its been clear from the start that emails would be covered by GDPR, and I believe that was the intent. edit: Official GDPR site, page on email: https://gdpr.eu/email-encryption/ also, see the widely circulated 'GDPR letter from hell', which is a sort of worst-case access-to-data request that could be made under the legislation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-acce... In particular, please tell…

From elsewhere in this thread, here is an article from a year ago that dismisses using GDPR to access emails about you.

https://thenextweb.com/eu/2018/05/03/no-gdpr-wont-let-you-re...

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#172

Post by pasabagi »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #93
sysbin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free will is an illusion and simply it doesn't exist. You cannot make either a choice or decision that's truly your own. Simply, you cannot without being effected by the system you're in. People don't choose the life they're born into and why does anything that comes after birth be assumed differently. The answer cultural conditioning and from religious ideology that has rooted deeply into society. The belief that go…

Let's suppose you're right and non-determinism doesn't exist. (Quantum physics apparently disagrees, but never mind that.) It doesn't matter. Treating people as though they have agency is still necessary, because how we treat them would affect their deterministic state function. If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them,…

> If someone commits murder and we say it was only a product of their environment and they have no agency, therefore we shouldn't punish them, well, that's the sort of "choice" that, on a systemic level, causes more people to commit murder.

I agree with the direction of your analysis, but I don't think this part is true. Recidivism is really high, especially in more 'punishment' oriented criminal justice systems. I think if you took your argument to its conclusion, you would probably look at systemic causes of murder, since agent-oriented approaches are so demonstrably ineffective.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#173

Post by ceejayoz »

justin66 wrote: post #30
ceejayoz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what? Someone's negative opinion of them?

Literally the first words in the article: Blacklisting at work has been illegal in the UK since 2010

Sure, but now you have to support the idea that the person in the article was blacklisted. Getting a bad recommendation and getting blacklisted are not the same thing.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#174

Post by awinder »

Silhouette wrote: post #155
Grue3 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in business context this can be weaponised. For example two executives in a company discuss some sort of business strategy and mention the competitor's CEO by name (also the competitor's company happens to be named after its CEO so it's impossible to discuss it without saying his or her name). The competitor's CEO GDPRs the emails and learns of the secret business plan as a result.

Even in business context this can be weaponised. Indeed. Just imagine the fall-out if someone started a movement where everyone who got turned down for a job they applied for then submitted a SAR for all of the internal commentary and communications about them. Suddenly every business that hires staff has an extra overhead, even small businesses need industrial-scale HR/legal mechanics for the application process, an…

This is already a concern (not the absence of hiring documentation, but extreme caution around what is captured into electronic long-term storage), pre-and-post GDPR. "Pick up the phone" is a very real piece of advice around hiring-related conversations and for good reasons. I think it's incredibly contorted to believe the world falls apart here (in fact, the world would have to be pretty broken in order for it to go down that way).

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#175

Post by dragonwriter »

harryh wrote: post #152
dragonwriter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can generally do the same thing in the US for emails to/from public university addresses with a FOIA request No, you can't, because FOIA applies to federal agencies only. Some official communications of a public university might be subject to similar state sunshine laws, but not all email to and from public university email addresses (even some official communication would be protected by FERPA or other privacy…

OK, you're correct that it's not the federal FOIA law that is the issue, but most states have similar state laws that have been used in the past for this sort of thing. See, for example: https://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/P...

> but most states have similar state laws

Which are addressed in the part of my post after the first sentence (which is entirely consistent with your link): they don't generally apply to all email from a public university address, or even (because of both express exceptions in the state laws and superceding federal law) all university employee communication using such addresses.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#176

Post by harryh »

dragonwriter wrote: post #175
harryh wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, you're correct that it's not the federal FOIA law that is the issue, but most states have similar state laws that have been used in the past for this sort of thing. See, for example: https://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/P...

> but most states have similar state laws Which are addressed in the part of my post after the first sentence (which is entirely consistent with your link): they don't generally apply to all email from a public university address, or even (because of both express exceptions in the state laws and superceding federal law) all university employee communication using such addresses.

Heh, ok. I think we're agreeing then. :)

Definitely some variation from state to state. And definitely some restrictions due to things like FERPA and other privacy laws.

But I think it's good for state university employees to know that this kind of thing can happen at all. I think that many of them would be surprised to learn that the general public can make any kind of request at all for copies of what they consider private emails.

I know that my wife, who does some work in areas that can be politically charged, was when she took a job at UNC and someone told her this.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#177

Post by SkyBelow »

sysbinn wrote: post #147
SkyBelow wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept, and thus the flaws in the original wager don't apply (as far as I can tell, if you can find one that does apply let me know).

> Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept How so? I assume the opposite when it comes to what's simpler. A person sees creation by God as cause & effect. The free will concept doesn't even make sense if thought about. Your actions are cause & effect from the summation of all events experienced.

For starters, generally the view is that free will either exists or doesn't exist with free will being the concept that we have some control over our actions.

Compare this to God, where you have plenty of religions, many with their own distinction God, some with many, some with concepts that may or may not quite count as God. Even with just Christianity, you have God, but then you have the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit which makes up God. With some belief systems you have spirits which are kinda like a god but kinda not and with other systems you have demigods which are part human.

So with free will, you options are:

    Option | Free Will
    1      | N
    2      | Y
With gods, you options are

    Option | God | Trinity | Allah | Shiva | Zeus | Thor | ...
    1      | N   | N       | N     | N...
    2      | Y   | N       | N     | N...
    3      | N   | Y       | N     | N...
    ...
And that isn't even counting the difference within a given religion. It is like comparing the cardinality of boolean options with the cardinality of the reals.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#178

Post by SkyBelow »

bena wrote: post #159
SkyBelow wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free will as a concept is much simpler than God as a concept, and thus the flaws in the original wager don't apply (as far as I can tell, if you can find one that does apply let me know).

It's impossible to actually know whether or not we have anything approaching free will. We could be a simulation, there could be an omnipotent deity, we could be the product of a bunch of processes unique to ourselves. None of it matters. We can only act on the world as we perceive it. If the world is controlled by some outside force that can manipulate it at will, including our perception and memory of events, there…

>So. If free will doesn't exist, it doesn't change anything. Because we cannot change the path we're on. We have no choice.

Which is why if I say there is free will and I'm right, then I'm right, and if I'm wrong, then I never had a choice and so right and wrong doesn't apply.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#179

Post by codeulike »

bhelkey wrote: post #171
codeulike wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its been clear from the start that emails would be covered by GDPR, and I believe that was the intent. edit: Official GDPR site, page on email: https://gdpr.eu/email-encryption/ also, see the widely circulated 'GDPR letter from hell', which is a sort of worst-case access-to-data request that could be made under the legislation: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-acce... In particular, please tell…

From elsewhere in this thread, here is an article from a year ago that dismisses using GDPR to access emails about you. https://thenextweb.com/eu/2018/05/03/no-gdpr-wont-let-you-re...

.. based on what some lawyer said about case law, before the legislation even went live.

Here's some discussion about it on the r/gdpr subreddit, the consensus seems to be emails probably are covered.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gdpr/comments/8lsgwm/can_you_reques...

One person sums it up as:

Emails that mention you are likely to count as personal data. However, your right to access that data must be balanced with the right to privacy of anyone else mentioned in the emails. The company would be entitled to redact the emails before sending them, and potentially to refuse the request entirely if that would require excessive effort.

Re: I thought I was being ‘blacklisted’, so I demanded to see colleagues’ emails

#180

Post by knd775 »

Balgair wrote: post #130
harryh wrote: post #21

You can generally do the same thing in the US for emails to/from public university addresses with a FOIA request. This seems kind of wild to me, but apparently it works.

In the US, many states have an Open Records act on the books. Typically this extends to the emails that acedemics at public universities send using their .edu addresses (among many other things). Though it varies from state to state, generally communications in and among anyone that recieves state funds in any way are considered part of the public record. For instance, in CA the Sacremento Bee mantains a DB of all th…

Transparent California goes even further than that. https://transparentcalifornia.com/
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