“In response to a 2011 court order, the university handed over about 1,800 emails. Another 12,000 emails were withheld because they were deemed exempt from disclosure under a records law provision that protects proprietary research produced by a public university.”
Whether there should be such a law is debatable.
I agree that Mann is obviously much more of an advocate than a researcher.
I assume you will agree that requiring people to scan every sentence of every communication for possible ways it could be misconstrued has a significant chilling effect. That is a cost of totally open records.
That is a cost of being a STATE EMPLOYEE being paid by the TAXPAYERS.
As a TAXPAYER I absolutely have the expectation and the legal right to demand to know what STATE EMPLOYEES are doing with time and equipment funded with my tax dollars.
We may be coming at this from two different views, mine is that if you're a state employee consuming my tax dollars you have no right to "privacy" or any kind of shielding while you're on my dime.
I think our country would be in a much better spot if a whole lot of other people demanded what I do.