Still a surprisingly amateur move. Once worked for the Federal Government where literally everything you write is potentially subject to a FOIA request. The message all new hires were told was, very clearly: "Never put anything into writing you wouldn't be happy to be see published on the front page of the Washington Post"
Anything that was even vaguely close to failing this test was handled exclusively by a private phone call or, preferably, in person conversation.
And this was for an org that was doing nothing sneaky or underhanded in the slightest. Still if something could be misunderstood in a negative way, don't put it in text.
I'm still surprised when I see coworkers say things in slack, which is clearly able to be monitors by admins, that don't pass this test. Far more surprised when people knowingly engage in criminal activity and keep any kind of unnecessary record.
Not writing down anything youd be upset another person read is a pretty standard instruction for people doing interactions with ordinary business clients anywhere that data protection legislation theoretically allows them to make a statutory request the company send records you hold about them (Probably other jurisdictions too, if their lawsuits have a discovery process)
And that's "dear junior sales team members, please don't put your opinion of the client in writing, in the unlikely event they ask for a data dump they might be a bit miffed", not "dear compliance chief, please don't write confessions to breaking laws our lawyers might be able to argue we attempted to comply with when we inevitably have to defend ourselves in court..."
> that's "dear junior sales team members, please don't put your opinion of the client in writing, in the unlikely event they ask for a data dump they might be a bit miffed"
One of my first moves running a trading team is reducing or eliminating internal chat. I don’t think I’ve gone a week without at least one client receiving an inappropriate nickname. It’s harmless. But it’s not something you want showing up in discovery or a regulatory inquiry.
I was _shocked_ when I moved from finance to tech and chat retentions (if they weren’t infinite) were set in months.
I was used to low single digit days retention. I still think that’s a good policy even without compliance issues. Keeping chat from becoming a de facto document management system.
> The message all new hires were told was, very clearly: "Never put anything into writing you wouldn't be happy to be see published on the front page of the Washington Post"
> And this was for an org that was doing nothing sneaky or underhanded in the slightest
I disagree. That culture is one of routinely doing sneaky and underhanded things.
If it wasn’t, the rule would be “don’t do anything you wouldn't be happy to be see published on the front page of the Washington Post.”
(Outside of things that are legally cobfidential, but those are generally protected from FOIA even if in writing.)
If you are actively preventing evidence of your actions from being created, that is itself evidence of consciousness of wrongdoing.
Plenty of examples of companies that did nothing wrong, but some written comment, by some employee is enough to convince a jury that "something probably happened".
I remember one pharmaceutical company was on trial for a drug that was suspected to have a bad side effect (later analysis show it didn't). They had done nothing wrong, all data was provided to the FDA, they diligently collected post-marking data, shared with the FDA, etc.
A civil suit was brought and during discovery they found a comment that said "maybe our dose was too high?". The person who made the comment had nothing to do with the trials, didn't have the skills to interpret the data, didn't even have a medical background.
Once that was found? Boom, the company settled because that was enough to convince a jury that "they probably knew it was wrong".
It's very easy to put something in writing now that has no impact, but in a few years time is a smoking gun. It doesn't matter if you testify that around the circumstances when you wrote it ("oh, I didn't mean that"), the jury won't believe you, the prosecution will just flash that one sentence up and say "see, it obvious the company was hiding the problem".
There are plenty of cases where you wouldn't want something perfectly reasonable to be published in the Post. The key is context - some things are complicated and require background and relevant information; if taken without that context, they'll seem bad.
Seeing as we live in a world in which people in the other political party are highly motivated to take whatever they can of their opponents (and their opponents' appointees, etc.) and make them sound bad, it's understandable that folks would be cautious of what they write down. If someone emails you a question whose answer is potentially politically sensitive, you might not want to provide a brief answer to that email that you know could be misconstrued. That isn't "evidence of consciousness of wrongdoing" - it's just understanding the reality of politics.
> There are plenty of cases where you wouldn't want something perfectly reasonable to be published in the Post. The key is context - some things are complicated and require background and relevant information; if taken without that context, they'll seem bad.
I agree with GP. It is a shadowy culture. The Washington Post bit is the clue when you walk in. You are working for the United States government. It is not the Washington Post you should care about, it is the Justice Department and the legal system.
If you say that politics trumps laws then you are implying extra-legal forces dominate legal forces in our system. One way such hidden power centers are created is via shadowy bureaucracies. For example, FBI should write down everything they discuss and decide. We should be able to shine a light into any government institution in our land. If everything is legally done, there is nothing to be worried about, Washington Post be damned.
Hard disagree- the appearance of wrongdoing can be nearly as harmful for the accused and cause as much trouble as actual wrongdoing. Both should be avoided.
Another Hard Disagree. I put everything thing in writing. If it’s not written down it didn’t happen.
Want access to prod? Sure give me a ticket. I don’t trust any place that doesn’t want things written down.
And the example of a drug trial comment being taken out of context? If it looks bad in a few years maybe it should also look bad now? And maybe steps should be taken to make it better now.
Writing things down, keeping copies of emails is the only way to hold management accountable.
In my country, there were some major anti-government protests a few years ago that pro-government media claimed were paid for by Sorosz and other such figures. My colleagues and I attended these protests and often talked about them. We also often joked about these claims by asking each other if the checks had arrived, how much they had made last night etc.
Of course, if our internal chats were subject to [the local equivalent of] FOIA requests, this would have been incredibly risky, since without the context of how much we laughed about them, the texts themselves would have looked like smoking guns. Government media would have had a field day.
This is the benign sort of thing you want to avoid putting in writing if your writing can be audited by motivated outside parties.
This is basically the “if you have nothing to hide, what’s the problem if the police can read all your correspondence?” argument applied to an organization.
Sure, if you view government agencies as equivalent to individual citizens and the public as equivalent to the police.
But some people view that the government is properly subordinate to the citizenry and not vice versa, such that inverting the government and public roles materially changes the scenario.
I think that no matter how scrupulous any government organization is, there are many motivated actors who would, given an unfiltered record of everyone single person's correspondence and conversations, be able to spin a misleading negative story out of it. This is essentially some people's full-time job and they're good at it.
> If you are actively preventing evidence of your actions from being created, that is itself evidence of consciousness of wrongdoing.
Government people are humans too, not just nameless bureaucrats. Imagine working somewhere that you would never be able to make a joke, speculate on a topic, ask a question, because it could be taken out of context due to everything being documented/written down.
It is fine to desire that, but realize that there needs to be a significant pay increase and/or a significant realignment of expectations, since nobody would want to independently take responsibility or action on anything. I have worked in a culture like that and let me tell you, it was extremely difficult to have every move under a microscope 24/7 and I would never do it again.
Yeah, I’ve worked in government for more than twenty years.
> Imagine working somewhere that you would never be able to make a joke, speculate on a topic, ask a question, because it could be taken out of context due to everything being documented/written down.
Everything being written down makes things being taken out of contexr less of a risk. People with the attitude “don’t write things down if you don’t want to see it in the Washington Post” are, in my experience, without exception concerned primarily about things that would be problematic taken in context.
> It is fine to desire that, but realize that there needs to be a significant pay increase and/or a significant realignment of expectations, since nobody would want to independently take responsibility or action on anything
The attitude at issue is one of avoiding, not taking responsibility. People with it are the people who refuse to take responsibility even if they enjoy exercising authority.
But, yes, you need to pay people in government significantly more, no argument there.
Seems like naive reasoning in a world where such messages can easily be taken out of context. Imagine a lawsuit about a car malfunction leading to death and someone digs up some source code with a kill_child_process method. What does it matter whether that was relevant at all to the case at hand? It looks bad anyway. Anyway, such policies are similarly common in the corporate world.
> I'm still surprised when I see coworkers say things in slack
I was recently talking with a friend who recently left government. They mentioned that they has a special slack emoji, "JK FOIA", so they could clearly mark things as "just kidding" to future FOIA readers.
Right but in court the failure to keep adequate records may mean that the judge may rule that the absence of records is evidence of guilt. I think Google is facing this issue specifically.
The government has done a pretty good job of making the process very easy: https://www.foia.gov/
But, just like with ChatGPT, you'll likely have to do a bit of "prompt engineering" to get a specific document. "Give me all the stuff you guys got on UFOS1!!" will likely be less fruitful then "I am requesting the email correspondence between X and Y related to the documented observation of an atmospheric event occurring on ..."
In my experience these requests are taken quite seriously.
>For a typical requester the agency can charge for the time it takes to search for records and for duplication of those records. There is usually no charge for the first two hours of search time or for the first 100 pages of duplication.
>You may always include in your request letter a specific statement limiting the amount that you are willing to pay in fees. If an agency estimates that the total fees for processing your request will exceed $25, it will notify you in writing of the estimate and offer you an opportunity to narrow your request in order to reduce the fees. If you agree to pay fees for a records search, you may be required to pay such fees even if the search does not locate any releasable records.
The cost of the request is often based on how many man hours it will take to fulfill. Different agencies have different rates / different capabilities for performing the document search itself. Some agencies may also reflexively deny requests, which would require a lawyer to sue them to get resolution if you believe the denial doesn't legitimately meet legal exception requirements.
> Can I ask for any communications that are related to a decision made or drafting of something that goes into the CFR?
The broader the request, the more expensive it is and the lower the likely signal-to-noise ratio of the response is.
Also, on your specific example, there is a broad exemption to FOIA for internal deliberative process-related opinions, conclusions, and recommendations, etc.
There's about 9 exemptions that can be used to exclude information from a FOIA request ( https://www.faa.gov/foia/media/exemptions.pdf ). Primarily things regarding law enforcement, national security and privacy although there is one for wells and geological info.
Still a surprisingly amateur move. Once worked for the Federal Government where literally everything you write is potentially subject to a FOIA request. The message all new hires were told was, very clearly: "Never put anything into writing you wouldn't be happy to be see published on the front page of the Washington Post"
Anything that was even vaguely close to failing this test was handled exclusively by a private phone call or, preferably, in person conversation.
And this was for an org that was doing nothing sneaky or underhanded in the slightest. Still if something could be misunderstood in a negative way, don't put it in text.
I'm still surprised when I see coworkers say things in slack, which is clearly able to be monitors by admins, that don't pass this test. Far more surprised when people knowingly engage in criminal activity and keep any kind of unnecessary record.