In Mississippi, Gov't Text Messages Are Officially Public Records 33
New submitter Chris Elkins (3620071) writes "Text messages [by public officials about government business] are now officially considered public records. An investigative reporter fought for access to what he believed were public records. He took his fight to the state and won. Mississippi open government and transparency advocates view this unanimous commission opinion as precedent-setting for all government bodies and public officials in the state."
Re:Awesome win for the Democrats... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awesome win for the Democrats... (Score:5, Informative)
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did you just allow an AC to bait you?
Yes, yes you did.
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Re:Awesome win for the Democrats... (Score:4, Funny)
He's a master baiter!
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the fish, and please tip your waitress...
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Go Away! I'm Baiting!
Ow! My balls!
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Then there's Greg Davis, former (R) Mayor of Southaven, who got caught racking up thousands of taxpayer dollars to take his secret boyfriend on trips and buy dildos in Canada. You can't make this shit up.
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Mail order? If I remember correctly, he went up to Canada ostensibly on business, and used his city credit card at the dildo store; that particular trip was what broke the scandal wide open. D'oh! If he'd just paid cash...
As for the quality of Canadian dildos, I have no idea.
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Well better a bunch of GOP racist texting a-holes than left wing senators who smuggle in rocket launchers and heavy machine guns.
I'd just as soon have neither, but if I gotta chose the worse of the two...
Burners (Score:4, Interesting)
In other news, sales of low-end prepaid phones in MS strangely doubled in recent days.
The political class is adept [nationalreview.com] at skirting [nationalreview.com] these laws and going unpunished.
Thank God for Mississippi (Score:3)
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Re:I find myself in agreement with the state of MS (Score:4, Insightful)
If the work is done for the agency, then it's public record.
This is why I don't use my personal devices for any government business.
End result (Score:2)
The end result of this will be: The state decides it's too expensive to track and just disables text messaging on all their service plans.
Records retention schedules a big deal in this (Score:1)
Public officials and government bodies in Mississippi have been breaking the law for a long time. Public records have retention schedules and archiving requirements, but these officials haven't been retaining and archiving text messages, which are public records. They don't currently have the technology or processes in place to handle this nor have they budgeted funds for this. They should have taken the law more seriously and adapted to open government sooner because now they have to scramble to make this
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So you simply order users of phones under the scheme to once a week mail the backup to a central database.
Also via the billing info it would be reasonably easy to see if someone has deleted messages.
Put some hefty penalties on non-compliance and you don't even need to call the NSA (or Snowden who might be less bureaucratic) for a copy.
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In other States its unofficial.... (Score:2)
I well and truly can't see why they would not be. (Score:1)