In Mississippi, Gov't Text Messages Are Officially Public Records

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...

[Nidi62]

Anthony Weiner would like to have a word with you. I also think he has some pictures you might find interesting.

Re:Awesome win for the Democrats...

[CrimsonAvenger]

I take it you're unaware that the Mayor of Tupelo (who was trying to conceal his text messages from the press) is a Democrat?

Re:

[geekoid]

did you just allow an AC to bait you?
Yes, yes you did.

Re:

[Zero__Kelvin]

No. He's the original AC. He's been baiting himself for years!

Re:Awesome win for the Democrats...

[J053]

He's a master baiter!

Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the fish, and please tip your waitress...

Re:

[IMightB]

Go Away! I'm Baiting!

Ow! My balls!

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[ShaunC]

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.

Re:

[Noishkel]

Heh! Yeah, I remember that... Always wondered why he chose to mail order from Canada. Are Canadian dildos the best dildos?

Re:

[ShaunC]

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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[baKanale]

Like that bastard Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York! He avoids email entirely [nydailynews.com] in favor of phone conversations or Blackberry pin-to-pin messages, so there's no record of anything that goes on. Wait, no, he's a Democrat. Thank God, then, it must be perfectly OK.

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[Noishkel]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

[turkeydance]

old 49-states quote. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T... [wikipedia.org]

I find myself in agreement with the state of MS.

[mmell]

At least, in this narrow instance. Elected (and appointed) government personnel are ostensibly held to a higher standard of accountability and transparency than other citizens. I am somewhat less certain about applying this to government employees (those hired for government jobs through civil hiring procedures), although there too I believe some higher standard should be held to apply, with said employees being notified in writing of the nature of that higher standard.

The only viable alternative would be to explicitly require that government personnel use only government supplied mechanisms during performance of their appointed duties. If a government official is discussing government business, We The People have a right to know everything (unclassified) which is said by our government officials regarding the conduct of our government's business. Either use government supplied resources (neatly avoiding privacy issues) or get used to the fact that any public inquiry can reasonably be expected to expose more than public information to public scrutiny.

Re:I find myself in agreement with the state of MS

[geekoid]

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

[Charliemopps]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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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[Teun]

I hardly ever text but I do know the texts stay in memory and there are back up programs to transfer them to a PC.

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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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

In other States its unofficial....

[Bob_Who]

.... what Mississippi said.

I well and truly can't see why they would not be.

[punapea]

When the whole phone tapping scandal kicked off royally, was I the only one thinking "Shouldn't they be discussing our best interests anyway? And if they are then what's the fuss about"? As someone said before me, government officials should be more transparent if anything -phone records, taxes they pay, property they own -BRING IT ON.