7 ms·

What constitutes a "personal email?" I can't find it explicitly stated anywhere whether this was a personal email address or his official university address, bu

by yock 14y ago

What constitutes a "personal email?" I can't find it explicitly stated anywhere whether this was a personal email address or his official university address, but if it's the latter I can't see how that is at all construed as personal.

rm999 14y ago
From the researcher's facebook page: >Judge issues final order. Affirms the university’s right to withhold scholarly communications and finds that the documents & personal emails of mine demanded by ATI were indeed protected as the university had contended. So, he was probably using that e-mail for personal communication. Plenty of people do it (including most of my professors when I was in grad school), even if it's not totally good practice.
arrrg 14y ago
I do not think that matters one bit. It’s pretty clear to me that morally, communication someone wrote with the expectation of privacy should not be made public unless there is evidence for criminal wrongdoing. You do not get to change the rules after the fact. If you want all e-mails researchers write to be public, the researchers have to be informed about that beforehand.
- cantankerous 14y ago
  This. Not to mention, if I knew my emails on my University account would be subject to public scrutiny, I'd just use another email account for all of my dealings.
- CWuestefeld 14y ago
  If you ask me to pay for your research, how can you claim that I'm not entitled to see the communications you've done in the process of that research? I paid for the email server (or for its usage), for your computer and its software, and for your time. I've got every right to see how it's used. In particular, with publicly-funded research, where we've got an extra step (or several) between the voters and those working on their behalf, the public has a right to know in order to tell their representatives whether they want the government to continue spending their money this way. UPDATE: I do not believe that those writing the emails had any legitimate expectation of privacy to begin with. It seems that employees don't generally have a right to privacy in their work emails. For example: Courts have found that employers are generally free to read employee email messages, as long as there's a valid business purpose for doing so. -- http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/email-monitoring-can-employer-read-30088.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/email-monitoring-can-... It seems to me that support of FOIA laws is a valid "business" purpose.
  - arrrg 14y ago
    You seem to be arguing that making e-mails public in the future would be good. Maybe. But making e-mails written in the past with the expectation of privacy public? That seems ill-advised to me. Update response: The employer is the university, certainly not the public. (I’m also not sure why you are so quick to dismiss the importance of private communication channels. To me it seems important that people who work together can talk together privately, without the public knowing.)
    - talmand 14y ago
      I think his point is that there shouldn't have been an expectation of privacy in the first place.
      - jlgreco 14y ago
        Maybe there should not be, but there was.
  - gjm11 14y ago
    "Privacy" means more than one thing in this context. Mann did not have (and shouldn't have expected) a right to privacy over his employer, the university. If they wanted to read his emails then they could. But he might have had (and expected) a right to privacy over the general public, or more specifically organizations like the American Tradition Institute. You can only get from "the university were entitled to read his email" to "the ATI were entitled to read his mail" by assuming that the ATI had that right over the university -- and that's pretty much exactly what the court case was about, which has just been decided in favour of Mann and the University. So, yeah, support of FOIA laws is doubtless a valid business purpose, but support of FOIA laws did not require the university to hand over Mann's emails. And this has nothing to do with the question of the university's right to read Mann's email.
cantankerous 14y ago
You're conflating meanings of the word "personal". It meant the email address assigned to the professor. He's not an elected official. Somebody's payroll being underwritten by tax dollars doesn't, on its face, entitle the public to their "personal" communications. It's a ridiculous notion especially in this case because this attack group wanted the emails to smear all parties involved. The court was wise to protect a reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of the staff at the University.
shardling 14y ago
A university email address is a personal account. A lot of older academics will only have the one account that they've been using since the 80s.
- talmand 14y ago
  Just because that's the only email address they use doesn't mean it's their personal account. It's the only account they use that's provided by a third party. If they quit their job and they lose the account, it wasn't their account in the first place.
  - rm999 14y ago
    You're arguing vague semantics. He used it for personal e-mail, that's what is relevant here.
    - talmand 14y ago
      No, it is not. He can use the account for personal email but that does not make the account itself personal. If you use an account provided by a third-party for personal emails then you cannot expect that email to remain private. It is subject to whims of the third-party and applicable laws. Although in terms of FOIA, as I understand it, one can expect unrelated emails of the request to not be released. But if one writes a small sentence relating to the subject of the FOIA request in an otherwise personal email, then it is subject to that request.
- crusso 14y ago
  A lot of music companies think that they have a physical monopoly on how digital music is distributed... since the 80s. Doesn't make it so. If anything, this type of incident serves as a reminder to our culture. It's so easy for communications to be copied and shared. That makes it all the more important that you separate your personal and work lives with clear digital boundaries.
gadders 14y ago
Agreed. Who thinks work email addresses are personal ones?

by yock 14y ago

rm999 14y ago

From the researcher's facebook page: >Judge issues final order. Affirms the university’s right to withhold scholarly communications and finds that the documents & personal emails of mine demanded by ATI were indeed protected as the university had contended. So, he was probably using that e-mail for personal communication. Plenty of people do it (including most of my professors when I was in grad school), even if it's not totally good practice.

arrrg 14y ago

I do not think that matters one bit. It’s pretty clear to me that morally, communication someone wrote with the expectation of privacy should not be made public unless there is evidence for criminal wrongdoing. You do not get to change the rules after the fact. If you want all e-mails researchers write to be public, the researchers have to be informed about that beforehand.

cantankerous 14y ago
This. Not to mention, if I knew my emails on my University account would be subject to public scrutiny, I'd just use another email account for all of my dealings.
CWuestefeld 14y ago
If you ask me to pay for your research, how can you claim that I'm not entitled to see the communications you've done in the process of that research? I paid for the email server (or for its usage), for your computer and its software, and for your time. I've got every right to see how it's used. In particular, with publicly-funded research, where we've got an extra step (or several) between the voters and those working on their behalf, the public has a right to know in order to tell their representatives whether they want the government to continue spending their money this way. UPDATE: I do not believe that those writing the emails had any legitimate expectation of privacy to begin with. It seems that employees don't generally have a right to privacy in their work emails. For example: Courts have found that employers are generally free to read employee email messages, as long as there's a valid business purpose for doing so. -- http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/email-monitoring-can-employer-read-30088.html http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/email-monitoring-can-... It seems to me that support of FOIA laws is a valid "business" purpose.
- arrrg 14y ago
  You seem to be arguing that making e-mails public in the future would be good. Maybe. But making e-mails written in the past with the expectation of privacy public? That seems ill-advised to me. Update response: The employer is the university, certainly not the public. (I’m also not sure why you are so quick to dismiss the importance of private communication channels. To me it seems important that people who work together can talk together privately, without the public knowing.)
  - talmand 14y ago
    I think his point is that there shouldn't have been an expectation of privacy in the first place.
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      Maybe there should not be, but there was.
- gjm11 14y ago
  "Privacy" means more than one thing in this context. Mann did not have (and shouldn't have expected) a right to privacy over his employer, the university. If they wanted to read his emails then they could. But he might have had (and expected) a right to privacy over the general public, or more specifically organizations like the American Tradition Institute. You can only get from "the university were entitled to read his email" to "the ATI were entitled to read his mail" by assuming that the ATI had that right over the university -- and that's pretty much exactly what the court case was about, which has just been decided in favour of Mann and the University. So, yeah, support of FOIA laws is doubtless a valid business purpose, but support of FOIA laws did not require the university to hand over Mann's emails. And this has nothing to do with the question of the university's right to read Mann's email.

cantankerous 14y ago

You're conflating meanings of the word "personal". It meant the email address assigned to the professor. He's not an elected official. Somebody's payroll being underwritten by tax dollars doesn't, on its face, entitle the public to their "personal" communications. It's a ridiculous notion especially in this case because this attack group wanted the emails to smear all parties involved. The court was wise to protect a reasonable expectation of privacy on the part of the staff at the University.

shardling 14y ago

A university email address is a personal account. A lot of older academics will only have the one account that they've been using since the 80s.

talmand 14y ago
Just because that's the only email address they use doesn't mean it's their personal account. It's the only account they use that's provided by a third party. If they quit their job and they lose the account, it wasn't their account in the first place.
- rm999 14y ago
  You're arguing vague semantics. He used it for personal e-mail, that's what is relevant here.
  - talmand 14y ago
    No, it is not. He can use the account for personal email but that does not make the account itself personal. If you use an account provided by a third-party for personal emails then you cannot expect that email to remain private. It is subject to whims of the third-party and applicable laws. Although in terms of FOIA, as I understand it, one can expect unrelated emails of the request to not be released. But if one writes a small sentence relating to the subject of the FOIA request in an otherwise personal email, then it is subject to that request.
crusso 14y ago
A lot of music companies think that they have a physical monopoly on how digital music is distributed... since the 80s. Doesn't make it so. If anything, this type of incident serves as a reminder to our culture. It's so easy for communications to be copied and shared. That makes it all the more important that you separate your personal and work lives with clear digital boundaries.

gadders 14y ago

Agreed. Who thinks work email addresses are personal ones?