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Emails of top Obama appointees remain a mystery

nota bene said:
Thank you for the clarification. As I say, my understanding is that my employer has the right to access my Yahoo account if I use it on my work computer, etc.
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I couldn't speak to your employers rights in that particular regard. I just don't know enough about the law in that area but I suspect that if your employer had reasonable cause to believe that you were using your Yahoo account from work for an illegal activity that impacted him or her then they could get that information with a warrant. I also suspect that your employer could have a policy that prohibits employees from using third party accounts on company time and, perhaps, check to see if you were doing so but I'm not so sure about getting access to that account just for the heck of it.
 
And look what you've just done. :roll: Edit: Response to David.
 
Personally I don't think you could effectively govern or discuss problems and decisions without the ability to have some of it remain secret. Although of course we want to know what our officials are doing and saying, but that can't possibly extend to everything.

For example in the Army if a Soldier gets into trouble he may appear before the commander to have the charges read against him and then he/she is typically sent out of the room while the leadership discusses what they think they should do. They talk about what he's done what kind of person he is, what sort of punishments each one thinks the Soldier the deserves etc. Once that is complete the Soldier is brought back in to hear the decision of the commander, but it would serve no purpose for him to know everything that is said in there. He doesn't need to know which leaders wanted harsher or softer punishments, all he needs to know is that a decision was reached and everyone who is his superior is going to act on that decision regardless of their personal opinion.

Likewise I could totally understand the desire of a President or someone else with decision making authority to want his discussions with his advisors or subordinates to not be entirely public, so that once a decision is made they can present themselves to the public as a united front all working towards the same end.
 
pbrauer said:
Can you show where the use of email alias are illegal in the government? Sure they complicate tracking a person's email, but I am not sure the use of them is illegal. The are doing governments business on government servers and that to me is what is important.

Bush Administration Appointees Also Used 'Secret E-mail Addresses' | ThinkProgress

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that some Obama administration officials utilize non-publicly listed e-mail addresses in addition to their publicly listed ones. But a ThinkProgress Freedom of Information Act request revealed that this common practice was also utilized by the George W. Bush administration and in no way shields those accounts from public records laws​
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Not only do you cherry pick others posts, and only read what you want to read in them, but it seems that even when you go to your incredibly biased leftist sites to refute something, you cherry pick that as well....It's right there in your own article....

"Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) told Fox and Friends that the use of “secret” secondary e-mails by administration officials could violate public records law, as investigators might not be able to subpoena accounts they did not know about."
 
j-mac said:
This is complete Bull! It is corrupt, it is illegal, and it is further evidence that this administration cares very little about the law, or the peoples right to oversee their governments actions.
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j-mac said:
Not only do you cherry pick others posts, and only read what you want to read in them, but it seems that even when you go to your incredibly biased leftist sites to refute something, you cherry pick that as well....It's right there in your own article....

"Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) told Fox and Friends that the use of “secret” secondary e-mails by administration officials could violate public records law, as investigators might not be able to subpoena accounts they did not know about."
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I didn't cherry pick anything j, I took the first paragraph of the article. What Alexander said on a very bias program means nothing. Can you support the crap you wrote in the OP?
 
pbrauer said:
I didn't cherry pick anything j, I took the first paragraph of the article. What Alexander said on a very bias program means nothing. Can you support the crap you wrote in the OP?
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For normal people I have, and unwittingly so have you....For all the leftist progressive hacks out there, probably nothing could meet their bar of support.
 
j-mac said:
For normal people I have, and unwittingly so have you....For all the leftist progressive hacks out there, probably nothing could meet their bar of support.
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IOW, you have nothing. :mrgreen:
 
j-mac said:
*yawn* you bore me Pete.
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You make a baseless claim about the law and when you're called on it, you're going to sleep? Figures.

When you looked the TP article did you read:


The AP story gives the impression that this is unprecedented, making no mention of the use of the multiple addresses by previous administrations.

U.S. Senators and Representatives also typically have non-published e-mail addresses, though Congress exempted itself from Freedom of Information laws. It seems obvious that political figures of both parties would need an unlisted e-mail address that cannot be easily guessed for communications with advisers and colleagues — just as cabinet secretaries private cell phone numbers would not be publicly available, though their main office number would be.

Despite Alexander’s concern, the release of this information shows that both the public and private email addresses are public record and that any legitimate FOIA request or subpoena for records would include those sent to and from both addresses.​
 
Fenton said:
Why should I do your research for you ?

Your'e a big boy aren't you ?
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He did the research. He gave you a link that is backed up by footnotes. That you don't want to read them is actually you not doing your homework... big boy.
 
Zyphlin said:
As you say, there are numerous differences. Another seeming difference is one was confined to seemingly White House staff while the other seems to have the potential to span multiple executive agencies across the government and possible attempts to stifle or slow the disclosure of information (the exorbidant price from one agency, 10 others dragging their feet, etc). Just as someone may have found the Bush issue to be a problem but this one not so much, others could perhaps feel that the potential wider reach of this case to be of greater concern than the Bush case. In both cases, those could just be excuses for a person to go "...well that ones DIFFERENT", but you're absolutely right that the two cases have differences and those differences could lead people to have an issue with one but not the other.

However, the person asking the question phrased it in such a way initially, along with the context of that posters history, to imply that one could not legitimately have an issue with this one but not with Bush's. I was wishing to see if that similar attitude extended the other way, which cwas clearly not hte case when he came up with a "Well, that one was *different*" response, failing to acknowledge that there are differences that could lead one to share his nuanced outrage in the opposite direction.

Their either different issues, and thus the imemdiete attempt at screaming hypocrisy was in error...which was part of my point...OR they are comparable, in which case my question about his consistency when just asking it in a one sided fashion that was justified.
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And now we get into the "seemingly" and "possibly" and "maybe" and whatever else the conservative conspiracy theory bull**** mind can come up with. Yes, this might be serious, if alot of things which there is no evidence of turns out to be true.
 
This is much to do about nothing. Just more evidence that "one" side is just looking for something to blame on the "other" side.
 
azgreg said:
This is much to do about nothing. Just more evidence that "one" side is just looking for something to blame on the "other" side.
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Isn't it just a little disconcerting to you that so many of these types of things are coming out at once? And they all seem to have a common thread running through them? And that common thread is that it reeks of corruption, and authoritarianism, but those defending them seem to just blanketly dismiss them?

Where there is so much smoke around, there is a fire somewhere.
 
j-mac said:
Isn't it just a little disconcerting to you that so many of these types of things are coming out at once? And they all seem to have a common thread running through them? And that common thread is that it reeks of corruption, and authoritarianism, but those defending them seem to just blanketly dismiss them?

Where there is so much smoke around, there is a fire somewhere.
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I don't disagree with you there, but this email story is nothing. I know what you are saying though. All these items by themselves are a pimple on an elephant's ass, but you have wonder with all of them coming up one after another, who's driving the bus?
 
Redress said:
And now we get into the "seemingly" and "possibly" and "maybe" and whatever else the conservative conspiracy theory bull**** mind can come up with. Yes, this might be serious, if alot of things which there is no evidence of turns out to be true.
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And yet we have another DIFFERENCE between the two situations yet again. The Bush Email situation's severity came to light due to congressional investigation and action taken to look into "seemingly", "Possibly", and "maybe" things. Having a view on it after the point of the oversight committee actually conducting an issuing and report is different than having an opinion on this current situation as it stands today, because both are at different points of progress.

How about instead of leaping into "OMG CONSERVATIVE CONSPIRACY THEORIES!" you read what I stated. I made no suggestion, either way, whether or not this was a serious offense nor whether or not the evidence will show an actual larger issue at the end or not. My suggestion was simply that there are DIFFERENCES in terms of the scope, issues, and potential problems in both cases that could allow for those trying to show outrage at either side but not the other to claim that each are "diiiiiifferent.

Either their different situations, in which the posters original question was nothing but a pointless attempt to distract and deflect rather than actually talk about the actual instance being discussed here...

...OR....

The situations are direclty comparable, in which the poster implying people are wrongfully showing faux outrage towards one but not the other should CONVERSELY be showing outrage towards both or to neither.

However what we had is a situation where for himself, the poster wanted them to be "diiiiiiferent" to justify why his rationalization of his one sided reaction is perfectly okay....but where he still seemingly projected that those who took a one sided reaction the other way were inherently wrong because the two things should seemingly be considered the same thing and equally condemned.
 
poweRob said:
He did the research. He gave you a link that is backed up by footnotes. That you
don't want to read them is actually you not doing your homework... big boy.
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Let me explain something to you people.

My 7 th grader is NOT ALLOWED to reference WIKI when doing reports.

I get it, most liberal and Obama suporters never made it to the 7th grade or they have the mentallity of a 2cnd grader.

And believe they are entitled to not only their twisted opinion and world view but think the minimum amount of effort needed to prove their point is more than sufficient.

WIKI is not a subjective and is a lazy attempt to prove your point.

But then again I'm telling a Liberal this.
 
Fenton said:
Let me explain something to you people.

My 7 th grader is NOT ALLOWED to reference WIKI when doing reports.

I get it, most liberal and Obama suporters never made it to the 7th grade or they have the mentallity of a 2cnd grader.

And believe they are entitled to not only their twisted opinion and world view but think the minimum amount of effort needed to prove their point is more than sufficient.

WIKI is not a subjective and is a lazy attempt to prove your point.

But then again I'm telling a Liberal this.
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So you're saying that WIKI is objective?
 
Fenton said:
No I mistakenly wrote "subjective".

No, WIKI is not objective.
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You do know that you can log in and change anything on there, right? If Republicans can't figure that out, who's fault is that?
 
Redress said:
And now we get into the "seemingly" and "possibly" and "maybe" and whatever else the conservative conspiracy theory bull**** mind can come up with. Yes, this might be serious, if alot of things which there is no evidence of turns out to be true.
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Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
 
rocket88 said:
You do know that you can log in and change
anything on there, right? If Republicans can't figure that out, who's fault is that?
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Sigh......

" Republicans " as well as Conservatives know it's a poor excuse for a source and most chose notnto use it.
 
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