The White House allows millions of email messages to slip away…
This must be the whole spending of political capital Mr. Bush referenced in 2004. There should be impeachment proceedings for everyone responsible for allowing potential evidence to be destroyed. Of course, there is no evidence pointing that person in the White House staff to technically any wrongdoing (unless there exist these orders somewhere else outside of the ‘house).
I’m curious how many messages the NSA could reproduce from the White House if required by law to do so? I’m guessing high 90s percentage-wise.
I think it’s strange that there are so many laws about record retention. There is no requirement to record every conversation that takes place in the White House. So why must emails be recorded and saved? They are simply conversations that happen to be over a network. I think that this must really limit the usefulness of email, as anything a person might not want to have saved forever couldn’t be sent over email.
There isn’t a requirement to record conversations, but email provides an easy way to enforce someone’s words. Paper trails are damning evidence in a court of law, and email is an electronic paper trail.
I wish government (all three branches) were more required to be open with their communication so the public could keep them more accountable. If I speak about committing a crime or violating ethics I should be easily held accountable for doing so.
I think you can thank the Nixon administration for the need for record retention. How dare he get caught
There should be a paper trail, for official declarations and actions which need to be enforced. But I think it should be in the form of intentionally created documents, not random emails, which are an accidental paper trail. Tracking all emails simply results in the smart criminals not using email (but yes, you will catch the dumber ones.)
I agree that there should be more openness in government, but at the same time I think even the most honest politicians will have a legitimate need to keep some conversations private. I’m not sure how these two factors could really be balanced.