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Scheming Kineavy
By Kaz on Mon, 09/28/2009 - 1:36pm
The Boston Globe has made available a sample of the 5000 e-mails that City Hall finally coughed up related to Kineavy (these are e-mails from other people's mailboxes that included Kineavy in the To/From/CC fields not from his own mailbox, because he was double deleting his e-mails to avoid archival).
Particularly telling as to Kineavy's motivation for double-deleting all of his e-mail is a heavily CC'd discussion related to 2009 Saint Patrick's Day breakfast roast jokes. Kineavy ends the discussion with his colleagues by stating:
"reminder...even though we are joking...these are foiable" (Freedom of Information Act-able)
This shows that he was obviously WELL aware of the MA Public Record Law and actively seeking to help others at City Hall avoid it with their own potentially damning e-mails.
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Comments
Sooooo he was aware of this
Sooooo he was aware of this so called Freedom of Information Act but was NOT aware that it applied to him?
As for it being too expensive to retrieve the deleted emails that is just silly. If he was an intern who spent most of his days stuffing envelopes and emailing people about small projects I think it would be crazy to retrieve the emails but we are talking about someone who is near the top tier of the city leadership.
Breaking the law
He knew he was breaking the law, but the whole Menino Machine thinks that the law does not apply to them.
I don't think we can rush to
I don't think we can rush to judgment so quickly. He might, for example, have assumed that everything was archived on the server, regardless of what he did with his own inbox. I routinely double delete, not for reasons of secrecy, but to keep my mail client running more efficiently. The wording of his FOIA warning could have implied "so be sure to delete everything," or it could have instead meant, "so let's not get too off color here."
But that doesn't fit Kaz's
But that doesn't fit Kaz's political agenda...
sniff, sniff.
The real focus is on the IT department at this point. It seem that some email was backed up server side, so was not. Why? Was everyone continually reminded about back policy and how it was implemented? Why was there a hole where Kineavy's emails disappeared into a black hole?
Kineavy's reminding others to keep it PG and work appropriate isn't so much a warning to be lockstep and secretive, as it is one to be buissiness appropriate. How this makes him look bad is beyond me, and this post really just paints the authors agenda on his sleeve.
Adam, you really need to limit other journals to back pages, especially politically charged opinion pieces. Either that, or give Zak more air time.
My limited agenda
Here's my limited agenda: getting rid of politicians who are corrupt OR incompetent.
Here's the problem I have with his e-mail statement: It shows a frame of mind and a knowledge of existing public record rules. He was explicitly acknowledging that what goes on in e-mails is public record and could potentially be grabbed by FOIA (actually, it's called MA Public Record Law on the state/local level). I make no assumptions that his intent was to tell them to delete it vs. keep it clean. I don't care what his intent was in this case, only that he directly acknowledged the use of e-mail as public record.
Dot Joyce, Menino's Press Secretary, started out by calling this a "glitch" as if something was wrong with the computer.
Menino's CIO was quoted in an interview as saying that nobody had informed him that nearly ALL e-mail was public record.
Kineavy claims that he assumed there was a backup somewhere even as he deleted e-mails in real time...even though he was telling others that these were important records of public importance and didn't validate such a critical assumption in any way.
Menino AND Coakley poo-poo'd this as political posturing and not a serious breach of the Public Records law (and likely nobody will step up to turn this into the actual criminal violation of the law that it BLATANTLY is!).
Another Menino official, Tinlin, appears to have similar e-mail losses as well.
The whole PILE of incompetence, at best, and corruption, at worst, stinks and is an(other) embarrassment of our city government. You'll have to forgive me if I'm assuming the worst, but I have little evidence to assume otherwise. Whether the truth is that it was a poor assumption as they claim it now in hindsight, a person would give the same answer when caught doing something illegal...whether by accident or intent.
Not Concrete Enough
It shows that he has knowledge of the law - but does not show that he is trying to destroy all evidence as suggested by some.
In fact, you could make a case that by what he said about the law he thought his emails were saved on the server.
Yeah, this sounds like management
The wording of his FOIA warning could have implied "so be sure to delete everything," or it could have instead meant, "so let's not get too off color here."
Yeah, I agree with your point here. By reminding everybody that the material is foiable (cute construction there, real cute) he's pulling a CYA move, but why to cover and how is still up in the air.
It does sound like a gentle nudge from management to keep it clean rather than a "cheese it! it's the feds!" warning, but I guess that doesn't matter to the people who believe that he's automatically got something to hide since he deleted his emails.
I guess my problem lies more
I guess my problem lies more in the fact that he showed knowledge of FOIA even in the most trivial of instances (he guys watch out, dontcha know that any person with twenty bucks can call city hall and get all of these emails anytime they want, do you want your mother reading this filth.) I would think that someone without knowledge of the system would assume that potty mouth session was easily deletable but instead he showed knowledge of the system. I think it shows that the ignorance argument may be harder then it was even a week ago.
Or he thought it was all
Or he thought it was all being taken care of by IT, as it's done in most public and private organizations.
Give it up guys.
There's nothing damning here about reminding people that what they say while working is public domain. A joke about someone can be very damning, especially when written about out of context.
I know you don't like mumbles, but you're really stretching here. Fine police work Lou!
Kineavey's claims of ignorance of the city's IT practices
and deficiencies are not credible. Plain and simple. This guy had his hand in virtually everything that went on at City Hall.
More likely scenario: he deleted his emails to avoid embarassment and/or prosecution, and he knew that if he deleted them the right way they wouldn't be recoverable.
Can't have it both ways
I find it hard to criticize a person for pointing out that the FOI exists and nudging his co-workers towards a more serious dialogue. I have received 1 or 2 e-mails like this before in my life and I have heard such verbal reminders at staff meeting after staff meeting and or employee training. You may not like Menino but this alone is nothing worth getting upset about.
no just...
The wholesale destruction of public records. Is that something to get upset about? Please Kaz is 100% right. This stinks and it is up to Galvin and Coakley to get to the bottom of it.
I'm surprised that
He doesn't keep any emails. I mean, what did the Globe article last week say -- that he had 18 emails? He's never had to refer back to a past email that he received? And if he did assume that they were being archived, he's never once had to ask for an email FROM that archive to get missing information? This over the course of how many years he's worked for the city?
He does not work in a small office, he assists in running a major city.
They're looking for some plausible deniability somewhere
These guys were warned by a judge many months ago. Even if they hadn't been, shouldn't receiving a federal subpoena for emails have raised some flags that these things are supposed to be saved, and weren't? Can we really believe that the city's corporation counsel has no idea what was contained in the mayor's top aide's answer to that subpoena? And are we to believe that in a city hall in which a city councillor apparently needs Kineavy's permission to get public records that Kineavy and the mayor did not know what was happening in the IT department, what the policies were, and whether they were being communicating and enforced? Really? One, special area that's hands-off and independent within city hall? Really?
I don't know how we could come to any other conclusion that there's gross incompetence or simple flouting of the law or both.
One doesn't commit such a flagrant violation of the law....
...unless it is less dangerous to do so than to not do so.
Im telling ya check the
Im telling ya check the filing cabinets! I bet he prints and stores. I had a boss who hated email, his assistant would print everything up for him every day and the things he needed he would file away.