and America takes another one in the........
Posted on 06/04/2013 4:04:02 AM PDT by bryan999
WASHINGTON (AP) - Some of President Barack Obama's political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.
The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees' email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.
The AP asked for the addresses following last year's disclosures that the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency had used separate email accounts at work. The practice is separate from officials who use personal, non-government email accounts for work, which generally is discouraged - but often happens anyway - due to laws requiring that most federal records be preserved.
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.myway.com ...
One day, maybe soon, we’ll see the burning of America’s Reichstag. If the House is retained by the GOP and the Senate is taken or has enough numbers to sufficiently de-fang Obama, it will come sooner rather than later.
Secret work emails, why???
Probably to discuss uncomfortable things like using the IRS to target Conservative and Tea Party non profits. Using official email accounts that are automatically archived for the public record could, well, be a little embarrassing.
Nixon’s people were rank amateurs compared to the regime from Chicago.
I would imagine if an investigation demands the search and/or seizure of a mailbox, that an incriminating correspondence would never show up in a search...
Such a stinking load to claim the proper, assigned mailboxes are filled with “unwanted messages”. What, the Federal mail servers can’t control spam or something?
From the article:
“Ten agencies have not yet turned over lists of email addresses, including the Environmental Protection Agency; the Pentagon; and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Treasury, Justice, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security, Commerce and Agriculture. All have said they are working on a response to the AP.
White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment.”
Also from the article... what an insult and outrage!! FIFTY people??? Seriously? Easily the stupidest thing I’ve read all day.
“The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay just over $1.03 million when the AP asked for email addresses of political appointees there. It said it needed pull 2,236 computer backup tapes from its archives and pay 50 people to pore over old records. Those costs included three weeks to identify tapes and ship them to a vendor, and pay each person $2,500 for nearly a month’s work. But under the department’s own FOIA rules - which it cited in its letter to the AP - it is prohibited from charging news organizations any costs except for photocopies after the first 100 pages. The department said it would take 14 weeks to find the emails if the AP had paid the money.”
Sounds like you just need one Chinese hacker to break in and publish in bulk the entire listing. And when they change the addresses the next week....repeat the same process.
This is MAJOR. There is no telling what they have been hiding from the People, the Congress, and the press. There needs to be an investigation of the entire Executive Branch. All computers need to be impounded or checked.
Barry on January 21, 2009 - "Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency."
AP getting some sweet revenge while performing a public service. Imagine if any of this was known seven short months ago. ::
If any of these agencies have had a computer refresh in the past year or so, the requested emails are already gone.
Even on the servers?
Yeah, right?? Are they expecting us to believe that they can’t control spam or junk mail something?
“unwanted messages”?
??????
water Board them!
But I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time...
The real issue here is that they are using secret email accounts to do business vs. The public ones. The excuse is volume of emails on the public accounts. Well that problem is easily fixed by filtering. Besides the public is their employer and they should be getting those mails like it or not. This practice needs to be outlawed for public servants.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that a refresh could be a convenient excuse to lose records. A good protocol would demand retention of records. I’m not expecting that solid protocols were in place much less followed.
and America takes another one in the........
They're using BlackBerrys.
Don't you remember when the Secret Service asked President-Elect Obama to give up his BlackBerry, and he refused?
When he's supposedly playing golf, he is constantly texting and reading between holes.
It would be very interesting to know how their intranet was set up and who's on it.
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