[HN Gopher] Judge orders CDC to stop deleting emails of departin...
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Judge orders CDC to stop deleting emails of departing staff:
'likely unlawful'
Author : koolba
Score : 174 points
Date : 2024-08-11 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| sigzero wrote:
| Likely? It is.
| halJordan wrote:
| Fortunately for those within our legal system, they have to be
| a little more rigorous than simple assertions.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Injecting "Trump-allied legal group" is an incredible way to
| taint the news story and get people to take sides.
|
| FOIA is a blessing, and does more for investigative journalist
| than almost anything else, but it doesn't work when our
| government is allowed to illegally covers its tracks.
| recursive wrote:
| Somehow it's refreshing to me that a "Trump-allied legal group"
| can sometimes do something that seems good to me.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| They are like diodes. Won't work when the shoe is on the
| other foot. But, yes.
| lelandfe wrote:
| To call America First Legal "Trump-aligned" is putting it
| mildly, and it would be incredible not to mention it:
|
| > _Stephen Miller, the former senior advisor to president
| Donald Trump, is the organization 's founder and president. The
| vice president is Gene Hamilton, a Department of Justice
| official under Trump, and the executive director is Matthew
| Whitaker, the acting U.S. attorney general under Trump
| following Jeff Sessions's resignation. America First Legal's
| board of directors includes Whitaker and former chief of staff
| for Trump, Mark Meadows._
|
| The name itself is even derived from a Trump campaign slogan.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Legal
| akira2501 wrote:
| > and it would be incredible not to mention it:
|
| Does that have something to do with this lawsuit or the
| merits of it?
| lelandfe wrote:
| Of course. It's explaining who the organization is that is
| filing it. That's basic journalism, right? It would seem a
| huge oversight to not mention it.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| a fundamental point of the US legal system is to unbind
| the merits of a legal proposal from the proponents of it,
| no?
| lelandfe wrote:
| Knowing who the proponents are is reasonable and
| unrelated to that concept.
| alpinisme wrote:
| That fundamental point of the legal system is not also a
| fundamental point of the industry of journalism, and I'm
| skeptical it could be
| karaterobot wrote:
| Of course it could be, nobody is compelling publishers.
| The question is _should_ it be, and the answer has
| traditionally been: depends, is it relevant? Which brings
| us back to the original question of merit.
|
| It also depends a lot on the standards of the publisher
| versus the expectations of the readership. Personally, I
| agree with your implication: I can't think of any papers
| today who wouldn't choose to include this information--as
| red meat is an important part of the modern news diet--
| but hey, in a world of unprejudiced readers who weighed
| legal matters solely on the basis of evidence, I can
| certainly imagine it not being brought up, and those
| readers still being well-informed.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > That's basic journalism, right?
|
| If it doesn't have a bearing on the story then it's the
| opposite of journalism.
|
| > It would seem a huge oversight to not mention it.
|
| I don't see how it would have any implications on the
| basic situation described, which is an internal CDC issue
| concerning their handling of documents during employee
| transition.
|
| I think what you're basically saying is "it would
| otherwise be a missed opportunity to fling political
| mud." Which, to me, is _not_ journalism.
| foldr wrote:
| The article doesn't fling any political mud.
| hondo77 wrote:
| You mean except this part:
|
| > "The Biden-Harris Administration was actively
| destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in
| blatant violation of the law -- and we are pleased that
| the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has
| ordered a stop to their illegal conduct," America First
| Legal's executive director Gene Hamilton said in a
| statement. "The Biden-Harris Administration's
| politicization of records management must end."
|
| Even though the decision shows that CDC has likely been
| doing this since at least 2016.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| That's _Gene Hamilton_ , executive director of America
| First Legal, flinging political mud.
|
| The _article_ doesn 't.
| mrkeen wrote:
| Yeah, they shouldn't have waited until paragraph 9 to
| name the group.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Divided we fall
| jfengel wrote:
| That ship sailed a long time ago.
| evanjrowley wrote:
| I wonder what factors led to the CDC Office of the Inspector
| General (OIG) missing this. Will the IG be auditing them on this
| in the future?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Not reported or not caught in spot checks (audits). You'd need
| a list of "lower level" (whatever that means) employees who had
| left more than 90 days prior to catch this.
|
| Also, many audits are somewhat optimistic in their approach.
| Ask for some portion of the archives. See a few hundred
| employees here (perhaps all GS-13 and up) who left 4 years or
| so ago and are still in the archives. Great! They don't dig
| into who the employees are to notice that lower ranked employee
| emails are gone and everything looks compliant. This isn't the
| only audit they need to do this week so this is as far as they
| go.
| gopher_space wrote:
| It'd be a mistake to assume a compliance process exists at
| all if it's never been triggered.
| tptacek wrote:
| Presumably CDC's records retentions policies go back many
| years, and the GRS 6.1 Capstone rules were promulgated in 2019,
| so (a) the policy discrepancy is pretty recent and (b) the
| douchebags-of-liberty+ challenging it only had an opportunity
| to do so after the previous Republican administration left
| office --- they themselves being right-wing partisans.
|
| + _a technical term, see Colbert_
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I had to look up that technical term. Presumably from Jon
| Stewart, actually:
|
| <https://creativeloafing.com/content-211263-rip-douchebag-
| of-...>
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It doesn't really even sound like they "missed" it. I.e. from
| the article:
|
| > The judge said the CDC, along with all other Department of
| Health and Human Services agencies, had adopted a National
| Archives protocol known as Capstone that calls for senior
| officials' emails to be preserved permanently and sets
| retention periods of between three and seven years for messages
| in the accounts of lower-level employees. CDC maintained it
| only signed on to part of the Capstone approach, but Contreras
| said the agency appeared to have embraced the whole plan and
| then abandoned part of it without permission.
|
| That is, there seems to be enough ambiguity there, especially
| in that last sentence, suggesting the CDC reasonably thought
| they were acting lawfully.
| mjevans wrote:
| Don't they use a time based legal discovery archive? I'm not sure
| when a government org is allowed to expunge old records though,
| maybe never? Still filing / dividing / partitioning it by at
| least year and month would speed up searches with time windows.
| foolswisdom wrote:
| The article says that the judge wrote that in order to comply
| with protocol they were required to hold onto emails for longer
| than they did, he did not say that they could never be deleted.
| chaps wrote:
| Hah. They almost definitely do.
|
| Not sure how it works at the federal level, but in Illinois
| here we have the Local Records Act, which requires that
| retention policies be created for all documents/records.
|
| When I FOIA'd for all of the retention policies they initially
| told me that my request was too difficult, because they were
| all digital files -- but he was going on vacation the next day
| so he told me to expect an unduly burdensome denial. I got it
| the next day from whoever took over.
|
| Anywho -- Most of the retention policies are older than me.
| That, and the question of whether third party data that's
| shared with a gov agency should fall under a retention policy
| or not.. is _clearly_ an open ended question. Edit: found it:
| https://www.muckrock.com/foi/illinois-168/retention-
| policies....
|
| Also at one point had to FOIA-sue the White House OMB for their
| email metadata when they said that they don't routinely use
| powershell. But they were sued years before where the nearly
| identical question came up, where they showed that powershell
| was used. And that's for data that they're legally required to
| collect for NARA archiving.
|
| Point being -- lol it's a shit show.
| greenchair wrote:
| I guess they had to delete the emails because they weren't smart
| enough to use secret gmail addresses to avoid oversight like
| their leaders do.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| That tactic is strongly recommended against. If there is an
| indication that someone is evading discovery by using their
| private email, then the private email becomes discoverable.
| Judges take avoidance antics very poorly, generally.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| > then the private email becomes discoverable. Has this
| happened in the case in question?
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Yes.
| michaelt wrote:
| Yes - the _right_ way to avoid discovery is in-person
| meetings, telephone calls, and discussions with your lawyer
| cced.
|
| I find it pretty understandable that politicians would end up
| with the personal and professional blurred together to be
| honest - it's not really a job that lends itself to a clear
| distinction between the two. You can't really separate the
| Obama Presidency from Obama.
| papercrane wrote:
| CC'ing the lawyer is popular, but probably counter
| productive. Just including your lawyer in the email chain
| doesn't make the email privileged and it's a good signal
| that there is something in the email you don't want found.
| ericjmorey wrote:
| Copying your lawyer on an email with a third party does not
| make that email privileged communication subject to
| attorney client privilege.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > and discussions with your lawyer cced.
|
| That one weird trick which does not really work
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The only way to avoid discovery is to not get caught.
| Pretty much everything else can be used against you.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Yes - the right way to avoid discovery is in-person
| meetings, telephone calls, and discussions with your lawyer
| cced.Yes - the right way to avoid discovery is in-person
| meetings, telephone calls, and discussions with your lawyer
| cced.
|
| Hey, Joey, we still gonna whack that guy tonight? CC'ing my
| lawyer here like I always do when we're planning to murder
| guys.
| chaps wrote:
| Recommended against, sure, but does that actually matter?
|
| I had to sue the City of Chicago because one of the Mayor's
| main policy consultants was using gmail for most of their
| work. Sure the judge frowned on it and I won the case.... but
| well over a year later after litigation ended and the
| relevant reporting already came out. Didn't notice until a
| couple months after litigation ended that a full year was
| missing from the doc, and we'd have had to litigate again.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Doesn't matter if it becomes discoverable. They'll just wipe
| it and claim it was done in the past since it's outside the
| audit/archive systems.
| mullingitover wrote:
| Using private email servers is quaint at this point, you may as
| well be using private carrier pigeons. These days all the smart
| malfeasants in office are using encrypted messaging apps with
| disappearing messages[1][2].
|
| The wildest part is that in the case of the January 6 plotters,
| they were _instructed_ to use Signal:
|
| > In the declaration from the Department of Homeland Security,
| filed under penalty of perjury, DHS claims that following a
| data breach in December 2020, Wolf and Cuccinnelli were given
| temporary phones and instructed to use Signal to communicate in
| December 2020 and January 2021. DHS claims the agency retained
| the Signal messages, but given that one of Signal's selling
| points is its "disappearing messages" feature, the accuracy of
| this claim may be questionable.
|
| [1] https://www.splinter.com/why-did-jared-kushner-download-
| an-e...
|
| [2] https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-
| investigations/cre...
| roamerz wrote:
| I would have assumed that everyone in this gov/enterprise space
| used an auditable email logging solution that keeps
| communications for whatever their applicable policy dictates.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I've been reading stories about US Gov agency dirs/mgmnt using
| private email for Gov business. Ostensibly because it went a
| long way dodge FOIA. The practice was widespread in every
| admin, from W until at least 2020.
| adastra22 wrote:
| That's what the whole "Hillary's emails" thing was about. Not
| that she had any damning emails, but that she was using a
| personal email account as Secretary of State to dodge FOIA
| requests.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Not that she had any damning emails
|
| Hard to say this since tons that were under subpeona were
| deleted
|
| Edit: the best part is Hillary claiming the emails weren't
| work related and the press just mindlessly repeating that
| claim. No way to tell if the claim is true or not since
| they were, y'know, deleted:
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-
| deleted-3300...
| lupusreal wrote:
| She's such a nice and reputable person, it makes sense to
| take her claims at face value.
| aredox wrote:
| Trump and co. had four years of full power to get to the
| bottom of it, and yet they didn't.
| Loughla wrote:
| What I don't understand is that the state agency I work for
| was VERY clear that if we use personal devices for work,
| they are immediately able to be subpoenaed in the event
| that happens.
|
| Why would feds be different?
| koolba wrote:
| And more specifically that she unilaterally decided which
| emails were "official" and which were personal rather than
| deferring that decision to a third party. And then she had
| whatever she considered personal deleted, _after_ being
| served with a subpoena for all the emails on their server.
| jordanb wrote:
| Hillary's emails was more about the Presidential Records
| Act than FOIA. PRA requires documents of the president,
| vice president and their staff to be kept forever. It was
| enacted because of efforts by Nixon to destroy information.
|
| Using private email services to avoid the PRA was only
| outlawed in 2014, which is after Hillary was no longer in
| the administration. However, it was obviously a pretty
| scummy thing to do before it was illegal.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| My guess is that you did not read the article (and, from
| reading most of the other comments, you are not alone). They
| _were_ using "auditable email logging solution that keeps
| communications for whatever their applicable policy dictates."
| The issue is that the CDC had a policy where lower level
| employees had their emails deleted after 90 days (and there was
| nothing secret about this, it was their standard procedure),
| but there is disagreement over how long these lower level
| employees have to have their emails retained due to the CDC
| agreeing to a "Capstone" records retention program from the
| National Archives. The article has the details.
|
| Issue being, the headline is written in a way that deliberately
| makes it sound like something nefarious is going on, where it
| sounds like an underlying disagreement over the interpretation
| of how long records were required to be retained due to this
| signing on to the Capstone program.
|
| Regardless, this is the Internet, so I'm sure everyone with an
| axe to grind will read this as "WhaT tHe CDC doEsn'T wAnT yOu
| to Seeeee!!!!"
| coding123 wrote:
| Can't trust the government anymore. Can't trust experts. can't
| trust science. Not much to trust anymore.
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(page generated 2024-08-11 23:00 UTC)