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I think they ought to legislate this into normality. The alternative is to make it mandatory to note all conversations with colleagues for the public record, ho

I think they ought to legislate this into normality. The alternative is to make it mandatory to note all conversations with colleagues for the public record, however trivial, which is obviously absurd. An IM conversation is a personal conversation, treating it any other way will stifle the effective function of government.

Sevaris 6y ago
It's not a personal conversation if you're working for the government and talking about topics that pertain to government functions. You have no right to privacy in the same way that your average citizen (should) be when your decisions affect the lives of millions. There needs to be a paper trail or power becomes even more opaque than it already is and all accountability goes out the window. There can be no democracy if your government can hide everything they do. The records don't necessarily need to always be public, but they do need to be stored so FOI requests can be served when necessary.
- bencollier49 6y ago
  Okay, so you believe that all conversations between lawmakers of any sort ought to be recorded?
  - Sevaris 6y ago
    Obviously, yes. Nixon would never have been impeached without the tapes. If there's no record, there's no accountability. That's just how it is.
    - evgen 6y ago
      While we are at it lets also mandate that all work-related communications you make are similarly archived. There is a long history of corporate malfeasance leading to catastrophic outcomes for the general public and we need to make sure that people like you are held accountable when your failures and bad decisions lead to poor outcomes. I am sure you will agree that without good record-keeping a lack of accountability for your actions is bound to lead to disaster. We will also expect a written transcript of all work conversations, no matter how innocuous you might think them to be, within 48 hours of the conversation. Thanks!
      - bencollier49 6y ago
        This is what I'm getting at. The reductio ad absurdam is indeed absurd.
- iguy 6y ago
  We don't only want accountability, we also want good decisions, and good advice, even on delicate topics. IMO this is quite a difficult topic. Suppose you are concerned that some variants of a policy you're thinking about may be legal or illegal. There is a pretty large gray area. You could corner the relevant legal mind after lunch, and ask his opinion. Then there is no recording, only your memory. Or you could email him, and get a more considered opinion. This is likely to lead to better policies. But perhaps some of the options you're considering are a bit controversial, and stating bluntly what you really mean (and what you are concerned about) is risky if your email may be subject to a FOI request. So perhaps you re-write it very carefully avoiding the worst options, or perhaps you run it past the PR people before emailing, or perhaps you give up and ask in the pub instead. These all seem like worse outcomes, and ones we should be careful not to encourage.
  - Sevaris 6y ago
    I'm sorry, but if you require the deletion of what you said to protect yourself from the people, then you shouldn't be in a position of power. > and stating bluntly what you really mean (and what you are concerned about) In the end, people aren't judged for this. They're judged for the actions that they take, and then communications like this are used for context. If your decision is so bad that they had to make a FOI request to find out how spurious your reasoning was, then I don't see why you should have the protection of having no paper trail. That's insanity.
    - iguy 6y ago
      > They're judged for the actions that they take I wish that were true, but it more often seems they're judged by the worst dirt that can be made to stick. And they know it.
    - goatinaboat 6y ago
      I'm sorry, but if you require the deletion of what you said to protect yourself from the people, then you shouldn't be in a position of power. In reality if a politician makes a genuine error or prediction that turns out to be wrong he will face demands that he resigns for deliberately misleading the public. The media have created this toxic environment where normal debate and discourse is impossible
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nabla9 6y ago
The media used does does not affect the privacy/non-privacy of the discussion in any way.
- dmurray 6y ago
  But it does. There's no expectation on politicians to record and publish their face-to-face one-on-one conversations.
  - nabla9 6y ago
    Can I gently bring the discussion back to the point. Usually argument defence in the internet seems to diverge. The issue: Using Signal to to evade Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Government officials are legally required to keep records of decision making and discussions made in official capacity. If they use discussions over Signal to make decisions, they should write memos and archive them. Just because the media they use is not doing it for the does not relieve them from the duty.
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    There should be such an expectation, though.
fit2rule 6y ago
I disagree entirely. Government must be conducted openly and with critical review by the people being governed, always. All government business should be logged and available for audit for years after the fact. Otherwise, what we get is a totalitarian class society divided between 'those that know the secrets' and 'those that do not'.
- bencollier49 6y ago
  So all conversations between politicians ought to be recorded. What about all conversation between government employees?
  - fit2rule 6y ago
    Yes. If you are performing a public duty, it must be done in open society. Anything less is corrupt by definition. Secret meetings are the opposite of open society.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      Complete recording of every conversation leads to transparency along with atrocious decisions, due to groupthink among other things. It's a most unfortunate dilemma, but it's a strong, well-documented phenomenon and you can't wish it away. An example of groupthink: I've been in a room, chairing a meeting, where everyone agreed on a definite course of action. Full consensus (except me). When I asked each person after the meeting what they personally wanted, literally 100% of them disagreed with the decision they had affirmatively consented to. The actual decision was something nobody wanted. The option was only even brought up because people believed (wrongly) that other people would want it. All of them "went along" with what they believed was the view of others in the room. They wanted lower friction; nobody wanted problems from dissenting (which includes time wasted in meetings due to believing there are different views to reconcile, even when that isn't actually true). Unfortunately all guessed incorrectly what the view of others was, then went along with their guess. When it's a big decision, it's tragic when that happens. Public duty has a lot of those. When performing public duty, you must have transparency, and avoid corruption, but you also must have intelligent group information sharing, reasoning and decisions. But you can't have them all. Wishing won't make it so. Choose your poison. Or better, choose a multi-layered system with well-placed compromises to get both intelligence and transparency in some measure, in whatever arrangement provides best results. I like what the Chatham House Rule wikipedia page says on this: > It is designed to reduce the risk of what has come to be described as groupthink, where unpopular views are excluded from discussion, reducing the range of opinions an organisation can discuss. With regards to corruption, one theory is that you need enough transparency that corruption cannot thrive; beyond that you get diminishing returns along with negative consequences in other areas. For a manufacturing analogy to corruption: To perform quality assurance that a batch of components is good, you don't need to measure every component, you only need to measure a random subset, chosen by the tester.

Sevaris 6y ago

It's not a personal conversation if you're working for the government and talking about topics that pertain to government functions. You have no right to privacy in the same way that your average citizen (should) be when your decisions affect the lives of millions. There needs to be a paper trail or power becomes even more opaque than it already is and all accountability goes out the window. There can be no democracy if your government can hide everything they do. The records don't necessarily need to always be public, but they do need to be stored so FOI requests can be served when necessary.

bencollier49 6y ago
Okay, so you believe that all conversations between lawmakers of any sort ought to be recorded?
- Sevaris 6y ago
  Obviously, yes. Nixon would never have been impeached without the tapes. If there's no record, there's no accountability. That's just how it is.
  - evgen 6y ago
    While we are at it lets also mandate that all work-related communications you make are similarly archived. There is a long history of corporate malfeasance leading to catastrophic outcomes for the general public and we need to make sure that people like you are held accountable when your failures and bad decisions lead to poor outcomes. I am sure you will agree that without good record-keeping a lack of accountability for your actions is bound to lead to disaster. We will also expect a written transcript of all work conversations, no matter how innocuous you might think them to be, within 48 hours of the conversation. Thanks!
    - bencollier49 6y ago
      This is what I'm getting at. The reductio ad absurdam is indeed absurd.
iguy 6y ago
We don't only want accountability, we also want good decisions, and good advice, even on delicate topics. IMO this is quite a difficult topic. Suppose you are concerned that some variants of a policy you're thinking about may be legal or illegal. There is a pretty large gray area. You could corner the relevant legal mind after lunch, and ask his opinion. Then there is no recording, only your memory. Or you could email him, and get a more considered opinion. This is likely to lead to better policies. But perhaps some of the options you're considering are a bit controversial, and stating bluntly what you really mean (and what you are concerned about) is risky if your email may be subject to a FOI request. So perhaps you re-write it very carefully avoiding the worst options, or perhaps you run it past the PR people before emailing, or perhaps you give up and ask in the pub instead. These all seem like worse outcomes, and ones we should be careful not to encourage.
- Sevaris 6y ago
  I'm sorry, but if you require the deletion of what you said to protect yourself from the people, then you shouldn't be in a position of power. > and stating bluntly what you really mean (and what you are concerned about) In the end, people aren't judged for this. They're judged for the actions that they take, and then communications like this are used for context. If your decision is so bad that they had to make a FOI request to find out how spurious your reasoning was, then I don't see why you should have the protection of having no paper trail. That's insanity.
  - iguy 6y ago
    > They're judged for the actions that they take I wish that were true, but it more often seems they're judged by the worst dirt that can be made to stick. And they know it.
  - goatinaboat 6y ago
    I'm sorry, but if you require the deletion of what you said to protect yourself from the people, then you shouldn't be in a position of power. In reality if a politician makes a genuine error or prediction that turns out to be wrong he will face demands that he resigns for deliberately misleading the public. The media have created this toxic environment where normal debate and discourse is impossible

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nabla9 6y ago

The media used does does not affect the privacy/non-privacy of the discussion in any way.

dmurray 6y ago
But it does. There's no expectation on politicians to record and publish their face-to-face one-on-one conversations.
- nabla9 6y ago
  Can I gently bring the discussion back to the point. Usually argument defence in the internet seems to diverge. The issue: Using Signal to to evade Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Government officials are legally required to keep records of decision making and discussions made in official capacity. If they use discussions over Signal to make decisions, they should write memos and archive them. Just because the media they use is not doing it for the does not relieve them from the duty.
- fit2rule 6y ago
  There should be such an expectation, though.

fit2rule 6y ago

I disagree entirely. Government must be conducted openly and with critical review by the people being governed, always. All government business should be logged and available for audit for years after the fact. Otherwise, what we get is a totalitarian class society divided between 'those that know the secrets' and 'those that do not'.

bencollier49 6y ago
So all conversations between politicians ought to be recorded. What about all conversation between government employees?
- fit2rule 6y ago
  Yes. If you are performing a public duty, it must be done in open society. Anything less is corrupt by definition. Secret meetings are the opposite of open society.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    Complete recording of every conversation leads to transparency along with atrocious decisions, due to groupthink among other things. It's a most unfortunate dilemma, but it's a strong, well-documented phenomenon and you can't wish it away. An example of groupthink: I've been in a room, chairing a meeting, where everyone agreed on a definite course of action. Full consensus (except me). When I asked each person after the meeting what they personally wanted, literally 100% of them disagreed with the decision they had affirmatively consented to. The actual decision was something nobody wanted. The option was only even brought up because people believed (wrongly) that other people would want it. All of them "went along" with what they believed was the view of others in the room. They wanted lower friction; nobody wanted problems from dissenting (which includes time wasted in meetings due to believing there are different views to reconcile, even when that isn't actually true). Unfortunately all guessed incorrectly what the view of others was, then went along with their guess. When it's a big decision, it's tragic when that happens. Public duty has a lot of those. When performing public duty, you must have transparency, and avoid corruption, but you also must have intelligent group information sharing, reasoning and decisions. But you can't have them all. Wishing won't make it so. Choose your poison. Or better, choose a multi-layered system with well-placed compromises to get both intelligence and transparency in some measure, in whatever arrangement provides best results. I like what the Chatham House Rule wikipedia page says on this: > It is designed to reduce the risk of what has come to be described as groupthink, where unpopular views are excluded from discussion, reducing the range of opinions an organisation can discuss. With regards to corruption, one theory is that you need enough transparency that corruption cannot thrive; beyond that you get diminishing returns along with negative consequences in other areas. For a manufacturing analogy to corruption: To perform quality assurance that a batch of components is good, you don't need to measure every component, you only need to measure a random subset, chosen by the tester.