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I'm curious - a quick look at your comments history shows you to have a fairly libertarian type of political leaning. But in this specific case you seem all for

I'm curious - a quick look at your comments history shows you to have a fairly libertarian type of political leaning. But in this specific case you seem all for the government intruding to force one organisation to hand over information to another. Why the change of heart on the role of government?

rjsamson 14y ago
I don't mean to speak for CWuestefeld, but from my perspective its about transparency in government. Mann is/was a government employee (I'm not talking about federal funding, but the fact that he was an employee of the Commonwealth of Virginia through UVA), and as such should be subject to the same laws and ideals governing transparency with regard to government workers (and resources), from the Governor down to low level bureaucratic civil servants.
- demallien 14y ago
  It is my understanding that university employees are not civil servants. According to Wikipedia, public universities in the US on average receive only 43% of funding frOm government, the rest is made up for by student fees and endowments. Also according to Wikipedia, UVA has the biggest endowment of any public university in the US. All of which is to say that universities, even public universities, are not government entities in the same way that public schools are. It is far from clear to me that libertarians would support the idea of a private citizen working for a non-government organisation being compelled to hand over private communications by the government. Of course I might be wrong about UVAs status, but I did a fair amount of searching, and could not find anything that would indicate that university employees were in fact government employees, and the information that I did find tended to support the idea that they were not. If I'm wrong about this, then the OP's position is easier to understand...
  - rjsamson 14y ago
    Interesting point to think about, however the % mix of funding source has little to do with whether employees of an organization are classified as civil servants. An example of this would be departments of transportation or other toll collecting public agencies - generally tolls and fees provide the bulk of the funding with taxpayer dollars making up a smaller percentage, yet the employees are very clearly civil servants. Since UVA employees's salaries are publicly available through FOIA (see http://datacenter.timesdispatch.com/databases/salaries-virginia-state-employees-details/ http://datacenter.timesdispatch.com/databases/salaries-virgi...) I think that's one pretty good indicator of civil service status. In Virginia, the University is required to report salary information, etc, to the Virginia Department of Human Resources Management. They are able to adjust how they report salary information for employees who are paid a portion through endowments and other outside sources. Now, I have no idea or information about the specific case with Mann - who knows, maybe he was being paid exclusively by some special endowment and so his records would not be subject to a FOI request - but I would have thought they would have used that in part of their justification for not complying with the request. Also - I don't consider myself a libertarian so I won't speak for them - I'm just a big proponent of government transparency.
cobrausn 14y ago
Every Libertarian I have ever met or talked to has been absolutely rock solid on the position of government transparency, which is what he is arguing for (he certainly doesn't get a choice to not pay for this research, the IRS frowns on that).

rjsamson 14y ago

I don't mean to speak for CWuestefeld, but from my perspective its about transparency in government. Mann is/was a government employee (I'm not talking about federal funding, but the fact that he was an employee of the Commonwealth of Virginia through UVA), and as such should be subject to the same laws and ideals governing transparency with regard to government workers (and resources), from the Governor down to low level bureaucratic civil servants.

demallien 14y ago
It is my understanding that university employees are not civil servants. According to Wikipedia, public universities in the US on average receive only 43% of funding frOm government, the rest is made up for by student fees and endowments. Also according to Wikipedia, UVA has the biggest endowment of any public university in the US. All of which is to say that universities, even public universities, are not government entities in the same way that public schools are. It is far from clear to me that libertarians would support the idea of a private citizen working for a non-government organisation being compelled to hand over private communications by the government. Of course I might be wrong about UVAs status, but I did a fair amount of searching, and could not find anything that would indicate that university employees were in fact government employees, and the information that I did find tended to support the idea that they were not. If I'm wrong about this, then the OP's position is easier to understand...
- rjsamson 14y ago
  Interesting point to think about, however the % mix of funding source has little to do with whether employees of an organization are classified as civil servants. An example of this would be departments of transportation or other toll collecting public agencies - generally tolls and fees provide the bulk of the funding with taxpayer dollars making up a smaller percentage, yet the employees are very clearly civil servants. Since UVA employees's salaries are publicly available through FOIA (see http://datacenter.timesdispatch.com/databases/salaries-virginia-state-employees-details/ http://datacenter.timesdispatch.com/databases/salaries-virgi...) I think that's one pretty good indicator of civil service status. In Virginia, the University is required to report salary information, etc, to the Virginia Department of Human Resources Management. They are able to adjust how they report salary information for employees who are paid a portion through endowments and other outside sources. Now, I have no idea or information about the specific case with Mann - who knows, maybe he was being paid exclusively by some special endowment and so his records would not be subject to a FOI request - but I would have thought they would have used that in part of their justification for not complying with the request. Also - I don't consider myself a libertarian so I won't speak for them - I'm just a big proponent of government transparency.

cobrausn 14y ago

Every Libertarian I have ever met or talked to has been absolutely rock solid on the position of government transparency, which is what he is arguing for (he certainly doesn't get a choice to not pay for this research, the IRS frowns on that).