Thursday, September 18, 2008

Privacy Versus Sunshine Laws


Glenn Greenwald, after noting that the hacking of Sarah Palin's email account was illegal, not to mention vicious and ugly, points to the irony of previously 4th amendment scoffers suddenly channeling their inner civil libertarian. That's odd enough.

But I'd also like to point out the following:

...Palin sometimes uses non-government e-mail to conduct state business. Previously disclosed e-mails indicate her administration embraced Yahoo accounts as an alternative to government e-mail, which could possibly be released to the public under Alaska's Open Records Act.

In other words, Palin's complaining about an email account being hacked that possibly was created in part to avoid compliance with open records laws.

Sort of sounds to me like a crook filing a burglary complaint over stolen goods getting pilfered.

Personally, I could not care any less about Palin's email. Greenwald provides a link, but I haven't bothered with it...because it's none of my business. However, the citizens of Alaska DO have the right to know about their governor's official correspondence, and trying to bypass open records acts is pretty cheap and cynical, if you ask me (and I won't even go into the Troopergate thing.)

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