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

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

#161

Post by stevage »

chaps wrote: post #151
stevage wrote: post #144

Argh. I used to work a lot in open data, including a stint within the open data department of a major city government. This kind of behaviour does nothing to advance the cause. It just perpetuates the belief that open data and FOI are massive waste of time and resources and open legal risks for no good reason. I'm also pretty surprised that people think email metadata from government is legitimate open data. Do you t…

None of this is open data. Open data is data that's released on a discretionary basis; often times a FOIA request for the same data found within open data has a legal requirement for redaction. We see this happen all the time. What's worse is that at the executive level, eg chief data officers are often forbidden by legal teams from interacting with the media and adjacent orgs. I've literally been told by a CDO that…

Perhaps you missed the bit where I said I worked in open data for years, including inside government.

They are two very different processes, yes. Open data tends to connect you with technologists and subject matter experts who want to talk about their field. FOI tends to connect you with lawyers and governance gurus who want to find reasons not to give you what you want.

Around here the FOI processes are getting slower and less forthcoming, in defiance of the law, and ridiculous requests like these ones do not help make the case for their support.

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

#162

Post by gopher_space »

chaps wrote: post #100
legitster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They thanked me for bringing the situation to their attention and all that, but the mood of the call was as if both parties had a knife behind their back. Somewhere towards the end of the call, I asked them if it was okay to keep the emails. Why not at least ask, right? >...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 forwa…

This was definitely not my first rodeo and I like to think I've done a good job in acting in good faith in future similar instances [1] for example. Every time I've reported something, the other side acts differently every single time. Sometimes they're friendly, sometimes they put out obvious traps ("prove it that you found HIPAA sensitive info"), and sometimes they're just thankful it didn't go worse. You gotta rea…

Your Seattle exchange makes perfect sense when you connect the people and the tech. You're using web3 thinking to interface with people using web2 tools to manipulate web1 software reading data from web0 systems. Sending and receiving info through this system is sometimes literally a game of telephone, but the translation steps will be set in stone.

E.g. Your email sent to IT was routed, unread, to another department. That department starts their rudimentary FOIA process which includes submitting IT-Request-4 regarding your specific date and field range. IT-Request-4 does not come with context. Seattle's IT department now specs out adding fields to a production database and adding your custom export to the end-of-day batch. They spec out additional hosting costs because IT-Request-4 was designed as a way to create data pipelines.

At this point there are only three people involved and they each have a different view on what's happening due to a knowledge gap. You could eliminate this (imho) by providing motivation and context in your initial request.

I wonder how these exchanges would look if you sent a 'pre-FOIA' heads up to specific departments in a city, introducing yourself as conducting a large-scale survey of FOIA processes and letting them know your request will revolve around a year's worth of email metadata. It feels like this could be a more collaborative process.

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

#163

Post by karelpeeters »

ajcp wrote: post #124
karelpeeters wrote: post #117

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.

Sure, it's all slightly fuzzy. I don't think that detracts much from the my point though.

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

#165

Post by legitster »

rootsudo wrote: post #134
legitster wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Well, all of them really. Sure, no warrant you can make an attempt to drop evidence because of overzealous police/executive power if there was no consent but the idea is to require documentation and to make sure the state (in this case) crosses their T's and does their I's before they can engage in this sort of conversation. Many times, if the case is weak, or not enforceable, a judge will not sign to execute the war…

> Many times, if the case is weak, or not enforceable, a judge will not sign to execute the warrant or said people that want to search will not try to get one (either knowing it wont be granted or it would be denied.)

Absolutely. Demanding a warrant is your protection against a weak case. But in this particular case, OP has already told authorities that they possessed contraband. The authorities already have everything they need to exercise a warrant. So insisting on one here is the exact opposite protection.

Again, OP was smart and worked with a lawyer to deescalate.

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

#166

Post by ajcp »

QuercusMax wrote: post #123
ajcp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Nope, you are correct, I completely over-looked the "campaigning". Campaigning is actually supposed to be kept very separate from civic business. Updating my comment.

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

#167

Post by chaps »

stevage wrote: post #161
chaps wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this is open data. Open data is data that's released on a discretionary basis; often times a FOIA request for the same data found within open data has a legal requirement for redaction. We see this happen all the time. What's worse is that at the executive level, eg chief data officers are often forbidden by legal teams from interacting with the media and adjacent orgs. I've literally been told by a CDO that…

Perhaps you missed the bit where I said I worked in open data for years, including inside government. They are two very different processes, yes. Open data tends to connect you with technologists and subject matter experts who want to talk about their field. FOI tends to connect you with lawyers and governance gurus who want to find reasons not to give you what you want. Around here the FOI processes are getting slow…

I've spoken to many people inside government who work on the open data side. To be blunt: the signal to noise ratio isn't very good in terms of whether someone actually knows what they're talking about. So please consider my reluctance to take much of what is said as a product of being lied to for years, both intentionally and unintentionally.

Yes, FOI processes are getting slower and yes we're going to keep suing. What other choice do we have? One thing to consider is that SO MUCH of that is a product of gov agencies simply not preparing their documents in a way that makes them FOIAable. So much can be done that simply isn't -- a significant amount of which is very intentional (eg, police records) in an intentional violation of the law.

We're not trying to be dicks in all of this. We just want to know what's going on. So yours (and many others in your position)'s clear desire to think of us as adversaries rather than simply people who want to know what the fuck is going on is blinding your vision.

Get out of your head as a person in government and start thinking as a person who's at least empathetic towards the frustrations of a tired public that constantly lied to, deceived, and fed communications that are perpetually weighed down by legally reviewed PR releases. We can do better, but sure as hell not with your defeated attitude.

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

#168

Post by akira2501 »

jawns wrote: 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…

I'd think he has the right to keep it. That right also comes with any criminal liability associated with improperly handling or releasing that data along with any civil damages that follow from the same. You'd be foolish to actually want to express this right.

However, there is zero chance I'd acquiesce to a third party high end security contractor like Kroll in to "scan my systems." I found that a little bit disturbing for a city to unleash it's world wide third party contractor on an unsuspecting civilian that was trying to help them out of a _legal mess_ they created.

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

#169

Post by lazyasciiart »

chaps wrote: post #167
stevage wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you missed the bit where I said I worked in open data for years, including inside government. They are two very different processes, yes. Open data tends to connect you with technologists and subject matter experts who want to talk about their field. FOI tends to connect you with lawyers and governance gurus who want to find reasons not to give you what you want. Around here the FOI processes are getting slow…

I've spoken to many people inside government who work on the open data side. To be blunt: the signal to noise ratio isn't very good in terms of whether someone actually knows what they're talking about. So please consider my reluctance to take much of what is said as a product of being lied to for years, both intentionally and unintentionally. Yes, FOI processes are getting slower and yes we're going to keep suing. W…

One thing to consider is that 'government' literally constantly advertises the opportunity for you to get credentials to their system and prepare documents themselves. They will pay you to do this.

> So yours (and many others in your position)'s clear desire to think of us as adversaries rather than simply people who want to know what the fuck is going on is blinding your vision.

Yea, I don't work in his position or any government position, but you are being adversarial. And, whatever you're trying to do, you're being a dick in at least this comment.

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

#170

Post by legitster »

l33t7332273 wrote: post #156
legitster wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A warrant is required for all government search This is not at all true. For example, if you enter into an agreement with your state to be a foster parent, you also have to agree for the state to inspect your home regularly. It's part of the agreement - no warrant required. The state is free to make search a condition of an agreement. So if the state wants to say "Agree to a search or we will pursue criminal procee…

I think this point is needlessly pedantic because it hasn’t much to do with the topic at hand. GP’s point was that you were wrong to say that warrants are _only_ required for police searches. The search we’re talking about here is very much the kind of search that warrants a warrant.

At least in the state of Washington, only police officers are authorized to execute warrants. So I don't feel like I am being pedantic. If you are saying it requires a warrant, it's officially a police search.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills in this thread and no one has an idea of what a warrant actually is and they are just throwing it around like a magic word.

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