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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)

#191

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

stevage wrote: post #145
jrockway wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the OP trolled them. It's their mistake, and he pointed out the mistake. "We'll hire a contractor to do whatever they want with your computer, or you go to jail." is not a fair way of resolving the situation. It cover's the mistake-maker's ass at great cost to the person who reported the mistake. Would you ever use a computer again if someone else of unknown intent had unlimited access to it for an exte…

Unknown intent? The intent could not possibly be more clear.

The intent could be either confirming the deletion of the data... or trying to find evidence to charge you with some kind of crime for having the data in the first place... or trying to dig up random dirt. Services which Kroll conveniently seems to also provide.

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

#192

Post by ajkjk »

QuercusMax wrote: post #125
ajkjk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does that have to do with it? The writer could easily, with no additional effort, treat people more respectfully and get the same results. We should not celebrate casual meanness.

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

#193

Post by niceice »

stevage wrote: post #146
bradley13 wrote: post #11

Government IT is famously expensive, and so often a disaster. I recently needed to open an account with a local agency. The fun started with two date fields on the web form, which turned out (trial and error) to require different formats. I finally received my credentials, but they didn't work. Assuming that the password was likely the problem, I tried the password reset function, only to get a 404 error. The person…

Do you know any competent IT professionals who would want to work in government for that salary? No. That is why government IT is not very good. It's a terrible environment to work in, and the pay is not good compared to private sector.

Where does all the money go? Healthcare.gov cost $840 million, in 2014 dollars, to develop.

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

#194

Post by f33d5173 »

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…

The US doesn't, as far as I'm aware, have any encoded right to one's personal data. Furthermore, copyright in the US does not extend to databases, such as a list of records. So there isn't a clear legal regime under which to prosecute someone for holding onto records they recieved improperly. Physical property and even some coyrightable data would be a different story.

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

#195

Post by singleshot_ »

legitster wrote: post #175
singleshot_ wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t speak for all of us, but I would certainly be one. The “particularity” feature of a warrant would be a primary concern, as would be the involvement of someone other than LE (I.e., the magistrate or judge signing the warrant).

Again, in this particular circumstance, where OP has already admitted to being in possession of the files, would there be any difficulty in obtaining a warrant for all of his computers? I'm honestly curious as to what there would be to gain on insisting on a warrant rather than just agree to some deal and avoid criminal proceedings.

Well, then, you can just read my comment again. Particularity & a third party outside of law enforcement would be two great places to start.

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

#196

Post by stevage »

niceice wrote: post #193
stevage wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know any competent IT professionals who would want to work in government for that salary? No. That is why government IT is not very good. It's a terrible environment to work in, and the pay is not good compared to private sector.

Where does all the money go? Healthcare.gov cost $840 million, in 2014 dollars, to develop.

In that case, probably a lot of external consultants. Plus that is just inherently a gigantic project with a million stakeholders etc.

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

#197

Post by db48x »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #171
db48x wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true, but remember that these are government employees. All business that they conduct is a matter of public record by definition. They are required by our laws to maintain a record of all actions and communications, which anyone is allowed to consult. Technically they’re not supposed to use government resources for private communication, and legally they are not allowed to use _private_ communication resource…

No, they aren't. 'They', being the people whose email addresses are being released, includes everyone who emails or receives an email from a government official . Thought you'd like to receive updates on the construction outside your house by email? Now it includes you.

Yes, they are. Virtually every consequential interaction you have with the government ends up as part of the public record. You don’t have to do that via email, and if email is convenient then having two email addresses is not that difficult. There are well–known exceptions, such as library borrowing records, which are exempt and have been since long before email addresses were invented.

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

#198

Post by ethbr1 »

legitster wrote: post #182
eli wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn near all of them. I would challenge you to find a defense attorney who would, in general, advise you to consent to a search even if you "have nothing to hide."

We're not talking about a blanket consent to search. We're talking about a controlled destruction of something dangerous.

I believe the issue people are taking with this approach is there is no "non-blanket consent to search."

If you invite law enforcement into your home, and they find probable cause or evidence of another crime, then they get to use that to prosecute you.

You don't get to say "but I had an agreement they would only enter my house for the singular purpose of X."

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

#199

Post by colinsane »

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…

> I'm also pretty surprised that people think email metadata from government is legitimate open data. Do you think it should be public how many times you have emailed government and gotten a response, and to which departments? I don't.

on the surface i agree with you. beneath the surface, other governmental units already possess all the metadata for your emails/phone calls, it would be a weird bit of asymmetry to say it’s okay for them to have your metadata but not for you to have their metadata.

it’s not a perfect mirror, for obvious reasons, but if OP went on to show that this metadata is powerful and push that neither side should be collecting that type of metadata, then that’s a single legitimate use i can think of for this kind of FOIA.

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

#200

Post by dfc »

gopher_space wrote: post #162
chaps wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is the web3 thinking?
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