8 ms·

The DoJ filed a motion on Wednesday to delay the release of the Clinton Foundation emails for 27 months. The reason cited was that there were errors in how the

by nhebb 10y ago

The DoJ filed a motion on Wednesday to delay the release of the Clinton Foundation emails for 27 months. The reason cited was that there were errors in how the search was conducted. Given that, it sounds like there is also a fundamental problem in how information is stored and classified. The FOIA requests were for emails, so I would think that the retrieval would be simple. They must be vetting each email for sensitive (secret) information, otherwise I can't imagine how it would take 2.25 years to fulfill that request. I can't tell if this is a stonewalling effort or a technology shortfall in the FOIA process.

rhino369 10y ago
I'm vetting FIOA-like request emails right now and yes each email is vetted for sensitive information. And not just secret info, there are a bunch of exemptions you have to watch out for. If anything the list of exemptions is too short. A lot of stuff that seems like it's private isn't exempted. It's incredibly time consuming and very very expensive. I'm working one person's emails from a 4 month span and we have ~dozen people working on it for a week. The more specific request the easier it is. The ones asking for "everything" are just hard as hell.
- Zigurd 10y ago
  Cry me a river. It's hard only because there is too much utterly worthless, indeed counterproductive, secrecy. A more open government could not do some things. Good. It shouldn't.
  - cm2012 10y ago
    The constitution of the United States + the Bill of Rights were all designed and argued about in secrecy. This was so the politicians in the room could actually be honest and negotiate rather than pander to their states short sighted interests.
    - Zigurd 10y ago
      How much that's exempt from FOIA is so high minded? It is 99.999% ass-coverage through secrecy and you know it.
      - ethbro 10y ago
        Surprisingly, most people in government, as elsewhere, spend a majority of their time simply trying to get their work done. Is there malfeasance and corruption? Certainly. Is the solution to go to 100% open records in a hyper-politicized environment? I'm less sure. I know I wouldn't want Fox News / MSNBC combing over every email I've ever sent in the course of doing my job.
        Zigurd 10y ago
        I'm not talking about malfeasance and corruption. I'm talking about embarrassment and enablement of dubious practices. FOIA should rightly make that painful.
        ethbro 10y ago
        On one hand you have dubious practices. On the other hand you have political football / back-stabbing. My point is that I believe the public interest is best served by a balance between "the public knows how this business was conducted" vs "any rival who wants my job can dig through everything I've done to find some dirt of me." Politicians, functionaries, and executive staff are people too. And I think HN can be a bit schizophrenic decrying "people in government are so ineffectual and unwilling to take risks" while simultaneously designing a purity litmus test where only the most boring, unadventurous apparatchiks are able to keep their jobs.
        Zigurd 10y ago
        > My point is that I believe the public interest is best served by a balance between "the public knows how this business was conducted" vs "any rival who wants my job can dig through everything I've done to find some dirt of me." Was that ever a standard for exemption from FOIA? Much less the intent of anyone writing any part of FOIA? Stupidity should hurt.
  - brownbat 10y ago
    So if someone asks for emails, no one should care if some of them are employees asking for medical leave? HIPAA just shouldn't apply to government employees? Emails containing complaints about harassment or assaults, the victims who complained should be just named to anyone who asks the government? Employees have to provide SSNs and banking info to HR, should that be publicized for scammers? "The Government" is also a workplace, and deals with all sorts of personal information on a daily basis. Their privacy is hardly "worthless," their emails deserve at least a quick sanity check before being released potentially to the entire world.
tvanantwerp 10y ago
This is just anecdotal, but it speaks to the technology problem. I live in DC; a few weeks ago, I found myself in a queue with some rather loud young women who all work/worked in a FOIA department of some federal agency (they didn't say which). They spent maybe 15 minutes complaining about various coworkers and their general incompetency. I especially remember their remarks about one man who absolutely could not learn about the redaction feature in Adobe Acrobat. He always printed documents, manually redacted them with a marker, and scanned them again. Not out of any kind of malice--he just couldn't/wouldn't learn a better way.
- reitanqild 10y ago
  Actually, from a computer security standpoint his way may be safer. See this for some food for thought on some of the ways digital alteration can fail you: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/126932/how-secure-is-blacking-out-sensitive-information-using-paint/126990 http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/126932/how-secur...
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    This is an excellent example of fud created by security pundits wanting to say "actually, that's not secure". If you read that link carefully you will find that the problems discussed are not unique to digital redaction (size/length of the redaction, height of the redaction, etc). The accepted answer also clearly stated that if you use pixel-replacement (this is what DoD calls it) you're fine. Further, there have been plenty of times I've seen a redaction-by-marker break down when the underlying ink bleeds through in photocopy. NSA published guidelines in 2005 for how to safely redact PDF (as well as word) documents. The corresponding physical redaction guidance begins by suggesting that the inspector physically remove the information to be redacted with an xacto knife. They redact and release thousands of documents, if nobody has reversed their redaction process yet then it's good enough.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      Note the may part of my answer. Also note the answer that points out underhanded ways to leak data. You then go ahead to recommend just the thing that gp was making fun of: printing and physically altering the document instead of using a software tool. Basically violent agreement: )
comex 10y ago
> They must be vetting each email for sensitive (secret) information, otherwise I can't imagine how it would take 2.25 years to fulfill that request. Yes, that's the gist of it. From the filing in question: "Furthermore, in this case in particular, the substantive review process is challenging given the wide-ranging subject matters covered by the documents at issue in this case. Id. ¶ 25. The documents implicate subject areas governed by multiple different bureaus within the State Department, all of which must be consulted before materials may be released. Id. State must also consult with other agencies within the U.S. Government. Id. Moreover, because Plaintiffs’ requests cover communications with outside organizations, State must consult with such outside organizations if the organizations’ confidential business information is at issue." Though there is certainly tech incompetence involved as well: "Specifically, it found that one office had not conducted the search by keyword, but rather had only searched the ‘To’ and ‘From’ line of the latest e-mail in an e-mail communication, a method that would not capture responsive e-mails found only in older communications that were part of an e-mail chain." "In order to do so, as explained in Mr. Stein’s Declaration, IPS must manually open and review every e-mail with an attachment amongst the 34,116 potentially responsive emails in order to determine whether any responsive attachments had inadvertently been omitted." ("Responsive" in this case means "sent or received by four current or former State employees – Michael Fuchs, Melanne Verveer, Cheryl Mills, and Huma Abedin – to or from individuals associated with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings".)

by nhebb 10y ago

rhino369 10y ago

I'm vetting FIOA-like request emails right now and yes each email is vetted for sensitive information. And not just secret info, there are a bunch of exemptions you have to watch out for. If anything the list of exemptions is too short. A lot of stuff that seems like it's private isn't exempted. It's incredibly time consuming and very very expensive. I'm working one person's emails from a 4 month span and we have ~dozen people working on it for a week. The more specific request the easier it is. The ones asking for "everything" are just hard as hell.

Zigurd 10y ago
Cry me a river. It's hard only because there is too much utterly worthless, indeed counterproductive, secrecy. A more open government could not do some things. Good. It shouldn't.
- cm2012 10y ago
  The constitution of the United States + the Bill of Rights were all designed and argued about in secrecy. This was so the politicians in the room could actually be honest and negotiate rather than pander to their states short sighted interests.
  - Zigurd 10y ago
    How much that's exempt from FOIA is so high minded? It is 99.999% ass-coverage through secrecy and you know it.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      Surprisingly, most people in government, as elsewhere, spend a majority of their time simply trying to get their work done. Is there malfeasance and corruption? Certainly. Is the solution to go to 100% open records in a hyper-politicized environment? I'm less sure. I know I wouldn't want Fox News / MSNBC combing over every email I've ever sent in the course of doing my job.
      - Zigurd 10y ago
        I'm not talking about malfeasance and corruption. I'm talking about embarrassment and enablement of dubious practices. FOIA should rightly make that painful.
        ethbro 10y ago
        On one hand you have dubious practices. On the other hand you have political football / back-stabbing. My point is that I believe the public interest is best served by a balance between "the public knows how this business was conducted" vs "any rival who wants my job can dig through everything I've done to find some dirt of me." Politicians, functionaries, and executive staff are people too. And I think HN can be a bit schizophrenic decrying "people in government are so ineffectual and unwilling to take risks" while simultaneously designing a purity litmus test where only the most boring, unadventurous apparatchiks are able to keep their jobs.
        Zigurd 10y ago
        > My point is that I believe the public interest is best served by a balance between "the public knows how this business was conducted" vs "any rival who wants my job can dig through everything I've done to find some dirt of me." Was that ever a standard for exemption from FOIA? Much less the intent of anyone writing any part of FOIA? Stupidity should hurt.
- brownbat 10y ago
  So if someone asks for emails, no one should care if some of them are employees asking for medical leave? HIPAA just shouldn't apply to government employees? Emails containing complaints about harassment or assaults, the victims who complained should be just named to anyone who asks the government? Employees have to provide SSNs and banking info to HR, should that be publicized for scammers? "The Government" is also a workplace, and deals with all sorts of personal information on a daily basis. Their privacy is hardly "worthless," their emails deserve at least a quick sanity check before being released potentially to the entire world.

tvanantwerp 10y ago

This is just anecdotal, but it speaks to the technology problem. I live in DC; a few weeks ago, I found myself in a queue with some rather loud young women who all work/worked in a FOIA department of some federal agency (they didn't say which). They spent maybe 15 minutes complaining about various coworkers and their general incompetency. I especially remember their remarks about one man who absolutely could not learn about the redaction feature in Adobe Acrobat. He always printed documents, manually redacted them with a marker, and scanned them again. Not out of any kind of malice--he just couldn't/wouldn't learn a better way.

reitanqild 10y ago
Actually, from a computer security standpoint his way may be safer. See this for some food for thought on some of the ways digital alteration can fail you: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/126932/how-secure-is-blacking-out-sensitive-information-using-paint/126990 http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/126932/how-secur...
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  This is an excellent example of fud created by security pundits wanting to say "actually, that's not secure". If you read that link carefully you will find that the problems discussed are not unique to digital redaction (size/length of the redaction, height of the redaction, etc). The accepted answer also clearly stated that if you use pixel-replacement (this is what DoD calls it) you're fine. Further, there have been plenty of times I've seen a redaction-by-marker break down when the underlying ink bleeds through in photocopy. NSA published guidelines in 2005 for how to safely redact PDF (as well as word) documents. The corresponding physical redaction guidance begins by suggesting that the inspector physically remove the information to be redacted with an xacto knife. They redact and release thousands of documents, if nobody has reversed their redaction process yet then it's good enough.
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    Note the may part of my answer. Also note the answer that points out underhanded ways to leak data. You then go ahead to recommend just the thing that gp was making fun of: printing and physically altering the document instead of using a software tool. Basically violent agreement: )

comex 10y ago

> They must be vetting each email for sensitive (secret) information, otherwise I can't imagine how it would take 2.25 years to fulfill that request. Yes, that's the gist of it. From the filing in question: "Furthermore, in this case in particular, the substantive review process is challenging given the wide-ranging subject matters covered by the documents at issue in this case. Id. ¶ 25. The documents implicate subject areas governed by multiple different bureaus within the State Department, all of which must be consulted before materials may be released. Id. State must also consult with other agencies within the U.S. Government. Id. Moreover, because Plaintiffs’ requests cover communications with outside organizations, State must consult with such outside organizations if the organizations’ confidential business information is at issue." Though there is certainly tech incompetence involved as well: "Specifically, it found that one office had not conducted the search by keyword, but rather had only searched the ‘To’ and ‘From’ line of the latest e-mail in an e-mail communication, a method that would not capture responsive e-mails found only in older communications that were part of an e-mail chain." "In order to do so, as explained in Mr. Stein’s Declaration, IPS must manually open and review every e-mail with an attachment amongst the 34,116 potentially responsive emails in order to determine whether any responsive attachments had inadvertently been omitted." ("Responsive" in this case means "sent or received by four current or former State employees – Michael Fuchs, Melanne Verveer, Cheryl Mills, and Huma Abedin – to or from individuals associated with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings".)