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The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

mchap.io

121–130 of 230 posts

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#121
post #93
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and he would have been free to do whatever he liked with the data. I think that's a pretty strong assertion.

You're right, my wording was imprecise. My point was that he could have continued to delve into the information without anyone hassling him, unless the city independently discovered their mistake. But you are right to point out that he still would have been somewhat limited in what he could do with the data without arousing suspicion.

I think the point is more that just because you can do something undetected doesn't make it legal.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#122
post #96

This is why city council member Dan Strauss, when going door to door campaigning, gives out his personal Gmail address rather than his city of Seattle address. Is this legal? It sure doesn't seem ethical

Sounds like he's trying to keep campaign activities separate from work activities. Doesn't sound necessarily unethical to me. Using your position as a public servant to use public resources for campaign purposes is what strikes me as unethical.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#123
post #120
post #96

This is why city council member Dan Strauss, when going door to door campaigning, gives out his personal Gmail address rather than his city of Seattle address. Is this legal? It sure doesn't seem ethical

He's implicitly admitting that he conducts civic business via his Gmail account. That means his Gmail account contains public records and is thus subject to FOIA requests. I'm not sure if city councilors are subject to such public scrutiny but it's still really stupid.

Is door-to-door campaigning "civic business"?

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#124

For all emails sent to/from any Seattle owned email address in 2017, please provide the following information: 1. From address 2. To address 3. bcc addresses 4. cc addresses 5. Time 6. Date Is this really a reasonable request that the government is expected to answer? Doesn't this expose a bunch of private information about government employees and the people they interact with? I understand this post (and apparently…

None of your examples can be derived from the metadata, but at *best* inferred.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#125
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Do you agree this data should cost 30 million dollars to retrieve? Do you agree that 10tb of storage should cost 1000s of dollars? Would you be mad if someone sent you data you did not ask for and then threatened legal action if you did not grant full access to your personal data in return? I don't agree with all his takes. It's absurd he toyed with the idea of asking to keep this data, for instance... But I…

Sounds like he was fucking with people who work for Seattle and then acting indignant and affronted when he gleaned even the slightest bit of irritation or frustration in response.

If the city employees don't want to follow the laws relating to disclosure of public records, they should find a new line of business.

Just because they're incompetent doesn't mean the public should suffer for it.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#126
post #77

Wow, this person seems really annoying and entitled.

I, personally, would be annoyed if governments were bureauc-walling me from information that I'm legally entitled to.

I'm extremely unsurprised that the Seattle Police and Human Services depts were holdouts from returning this data. Police are notorious for stonewalling these types of disclosure requests.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#127
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot get a warrant without probably cause that a crime has been committed. So asking for a warrant to search your computer is literally asking to be charged with a crime. IANAL, but demanding a prosecutor and judge be involved when dealing with an IT department is really dumb. If you can just agree with their legal team (and your lawyer) on the stipulations of the search and confirmation, you can't be charged w…

This is terrible advice based on a real misunderstanding of the law.

How so? What lawyer would insist on their client getting searched via a warrant?

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#128
post #96

This is why city council member Dan Strauss, when going door to door campaigning, gives out his personal Gmail address rather than his city of Seattle address. Is this legal? It sure doesn't seem ethical

It's generally illegal for public employees or officers of any kind to make more than incidental use of public resources for any personal, rather than public-business purposes (political or otherwise), and further its even more illegal for public officials to use public resources for political campaign purposes.

So, yeah, using a non-city email address as his campaign contact email seems not only legal and ethical, but probably legally and ethically mandatory.

EDIT: the applicable Washington state statute on political campaign uses of public resources is: https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=42.52.180

The main body of the rule is "No state officer or state employee may use or authorize the use of facilities of an agency, directly or indirectly, for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election of a person to an office or for the promotion of or opposition to a ballot proposition. Knowing acquiescence by a person with authority to direct, control, or influence the actions of the state officer or state employee using public resources in violation of this section constitutes a violation of this section. Facilities of an agency include, but are not limited to, use of stationery, postage, machines, and equipment, use of state employees of the agency during working hours, vehicles, office space, publications of the agency, and clientele lists of persons served by the agency."

EDIT AGAIN: Looking at that again, that is specific to state officers or employees, so may not be applicable to city officials, but represents the kind of rule that is commonly in place.

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#129
post #22

The most interesting part of this story is the potential legal risk of holding onto the records that were improperly disclosed. Had the author not notified the city that they had royally screwed up by divulging far more sensitive information than they had realized, they likely would have never realized the error, and he would have been free to do whatever he liked with the data. But once he notified them of their err…

If a merchant mails something you didn't order, you are allowed to keep it.

https://about.usps.com/publications/pub300a/pub300a_v04_revi...

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-Options-Do-I-Have-Regard...

Additional discussion on if they mis-ship things to you:

https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/17533/if-a-retailer-...

Re: The City of Seattle accidentally gave me 32M emails for $40 (2018)

#130
> This isn't something I'm even remotely cool with, so we ended the call a couple minutes later, and agreed to have our lawyers speak going forward. ... After that call, I asked my lawyer to reach out to their lawyer and was pretty much told that Seattle was approaching the problem as if they were pursuing Computer Fraud And Abuse (CFAA) charges. For information that they sent. Jiminey Cricket..

Not addressing the main thrust of the article I know, but I am genuinely curious: do a lot of people have a "my lawyer" ready to go?

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