Don't they use a time based legal discovery archive? I'm not sure when a government org is allowed to expunge old records though, maybe never? Still filing / dividing / partitioning it by at least year and month would speed up searches with time windows.
Not sure how it works at the federal level, but in Illinois here we have the Local Records Act, which requires that retention policies be created for all documents/records.
When I FOIA'd for all of the retention policies they initially told me that my request was too difficult, because they were all digital files -- but he was going on vacation the next day so he told me to expect an unduly burdensome denial. I got it the next day from whoever took over.
Anywho -- Most of the retention policies are older than me. That, and the question of whether third party data that's shared with a gov agency should fall under a retention policy or not.. is clearly an open ended question. Edit: found it: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/illinois-168/retention-policies....
Also at one point had to FOIA-sue the White House OMB for their email metadata when they said that they don't routinely use powershell. But they were sued years before where the nearly identical question came up, where they showed that powershell was used. And that's for data that they're legally required to collect for NARA archiving.
It was largely about what FOIA compels an agency to do. They were arguing that what we were asking for was way outside of what is normally done. It was a strange argument.
The article says that the judge wrote that in order to comply with protocol they were required to hold onto emails for longer than they did, he did not say that they could never be deleted.
It doesn't really even sound like they "missed" it. I.e. from the article:
> The judge said the CDC, along with all other Department of Health and Human Services agencies, had adopted a National Archives protocol known as Capstone that calls for senior officials’ emails to be preserved permanently and sets retention periods of between three and seven years for messages in the accounts of lower-level employees. CDC maintained it only signed on to part of the Capstone approach, but Contreras said the agency appeared to have embraced the whole plan and then abandoned part of it without permission.
That is, there seems to be enough ambiguity there, especially in that last sentence, suggesting the CDC reasonably thought they were acting lawfully.
Not reported or not caught in spot checks (audits). You'd need a list of "lower level" (whatever that means) employees who had left more than 90 days prior to catch this.
Also, many audits are somewhat optimistic in their approach. Ask for some portion of the archives. See a few hundred employees here (perhaps all GS-13 and up) who left 4 years or so ago and are still in the archives. Great! They don't dig into who the employees are to notice that lower ranked employee emails are gone and everything looks compliant. This isn't the only audit they need to do this week so this is as far as they go.
Presumably CDC's records retentions policies go back many years, and the GRS 6.1 Capstone rules were promulgated in 2019, so (a) the policy discrepancy is pretty recent and (b) the douchebags-of-liberty† challenging it only had an opportunity to do so after the previous Republican administration left office --- they themselves being right-wing partisans.
Many years ago, I worked for a contractor at a civil agency. Simply to make the email system function, we needed to keep retention at two or three weeks. The only persons for whom email was to be held were political appointees. What I saw was that they would take most of their last couple of weeks as vacation, and that there was almost never anything but department-wide announcements.
It would have been possible to retrieve a point-in-time snapshot from a monthly backup, and that did happen a couple of times.
I almost don’t even bother reading my email anymore because almost all work happens over slack and zoom. Do they have the same retention requirements for all other non-email communication channels?
I work in a heavily regulated industry, and 'yes' is the answer for us, even going as far as mobile-first IM platforms. There's a very small number of vendors who pull in lots of money making UI hooks for things like WeChat and WhatsApp just so we can store the messages for the people in Risk and Compliance.
I can’t remember what the case was but I recently read an article where somebody was joking about a company doing something illegal and the response from the legal department in Slack was “ha ha shut up”
During your Company Ethics training (when you learn about insider training and not bribing government officials) they also tell you "never comment on the legality of something unless you're a lawyer. But if you do, say it in a meeting and not digitally."
I started working in the entertainment industry several years ago.
If there's accountability on the line, bosses want it in an email so they can point the finger at someone when they try to slither their way out of a fuckup.
I would have assumed that everyone in this gov/enterprise space used an auditable email logging solution that keeps communications for whatever their applicable policy dictates.
I've been reading stories about US Gov agency dirs/mgmnt using private email for Gov business. Ostensibly because it went a long way dodge FOIA. The practice was widespread in every admin, from W until at least 2020.
That’s what the whole “Hillary’s emails” thing was about. Not that she had any damning emails, but that she was using a personal email account as Secretary of State to dodge FOIA requests.
And more specifically that she unilaterally decided which emails were “official” and which were personal rather than deferring that decision to a third party. And then she had whatever she considered personal deleted, after being served with a subpoena for all the emails on their server.
Hard to say this since tons that were under subpeona were deleted
Edit: the best part is Hillary claiming the emails weren't work related and the press just mindlessly repeating that claim. No way to tell if the claim is true or not since they were, y'know, deleted: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-deleted-3300...
Email is a two way street. If she sent a damning email, the recipient would have it. If she received a damning email, the sender would have a copy. Yet somehow no example of such an email has ever surfaced, despite it being something that would have carried a lot of weight when Trump was president.
Damning of Hillary, not necessarily the recipient, after she lost the election and was pushed out of politics, and wanted by the new President Trump (their boss) who had an ego desperate for vindication. Doesn't the question answer itself?
If we posit the existence of emails indicative of a criminal conspiracy, maybe many of them were damning of both parties and it's reasonable to assume we never saw them. But everysingleemail? That is incredibly unlikely.
More likely solution: Hillary did turn over all the emails having to do with her job when it was requested that she do so, and the ones she held back and deleted were conversations with family, online shopping, etc. that she didn't want distributed all over the public media. No criminal conspiracy emails have since shown up because there aren't any.
1) A criminal conspiracy would necessarily also indict the counterparty, since conspiracy is a crime and they’d just be as culpable. So they’d need to not delete their emails and let them out too, despite knowing this.
2) Yeah, I don’t expect she was doing anything actually very nefarious. Certainly not like the things that have been actively admitted to by Trump in full view of the Public.
I’ve personally always taken everything Trump has been ranting about as projection. It certainly holds up well to reality testing, eh?
What I don't understand is that the state agency I work for was VERY clear that if we use personal devices for work, they are immediately able to be subpoenaed in the event that happens.
Also says every gov employee and soldier who would get thrown in a cell in a hot minute for doing any of the things Trump has done re: government secret materiel.
It's pretty simple - Biden wasn't president when it stored his records, Trump was. All classification authority emanates from the President, not senators or vice presidents.
To do so, Trump would have had to have done said declassification. Something he notably did not do. In fact, he also didn’t turn them over when explicitly asked when he left office.
He also lied repeatedly about keeping them, and kept them (and handled them) well after he was out of office and no longer president. He also explicitly directed employees of his which were not cleared for the material to move and handle those records.
He also kept them in a place easily accessible to folks who were paying him money (personally) at Mar-a-lago and went to some trouble it seems to destroy evidence related to who may have seen them (security tapes, etc) when the FBI came looking.
And that is ignoring the issues like a huge (and unprecedented) spike in CIA assets being killed/disappeared related to this material once he was in office, the Kushner loans from the Saudis that seems related to this material and other information, Kashoggi’s murder (right around the time of the Kushner loans from the Saudi’s BTw), and the whole fiasco with Flynn (appointed national security advisor by Trump) with Russian ties. And Trump’s repeated statements trying to shake down the Ukraine gov’t and explicit statements that he would direct US foreign policy against what are clear US interests and towards widely stated Russian interests. Like withdrawing from NATO, or removing US support for Ukraine.
In contrast, Biden appears to have kept some records at home in a location that was not widely accessible, and he returned them when asked, and as part of normal processes common to transitions. Not ideal.
But I’ve heard no accusations (not even flimsy ones), let alone seen any statements or actions from him, that even imply he is working against US national interests, or the nation has suffered any actual harm related to those actions.
So not even on the same planet as what Trump has admitted to doing, let alone what seems to be quite apparent that he has been doing flagrantly.
If Biden committed a meaningful crime? Impeach him, remove him from office, and lock him up.
Trump has been convicted of numerous felonies, not even counting Jan 6th and numerous other acts committed in full view of the public, and is still rattling around free as a bird and undermining US public interests.
Why is he not in jail? Why is he still out on bail, especially after making clear statements (before and after trial) that he has plans to flee the country?
Oh, and Biden, being president later, could have even gone back and declassified those records he had in his garage to cover his ass - but didn’t.
Hillary's emails was more about the Presidential Records Act than FOIA. PRA requires documents of the president, vice president and their staff to be kept forever. It was enacted because of efforts by Nixon to destroy information.
Using private email services to avoid the PRA was only outlawed in 2014, which is after Hillary was no longer in the administration. However, it was obviously a pretty scummy thing to do before it was illegal.
There were a lot of problems with Hillary’s email server. The major criminal liability was the fact that classified information had been sent and received in many of those emails, though Comey ultimately decided that this was not intentional on Hillary’s part.
There was also concerns about security and email retention. The retention issues were kind of funny; the official sequence of events was:
1. Hillary’s chief of staff and lawyers go through her emails and send all the work related ones to the State Department for archiving.
2. Hillary’s chief of staff then asks PRN (the company managing the server) to set a 60 day retention policy.
3. Months pass.
4. The server comes to public attention, and a Congressional committee investigating the Benghazi fiasco subpoenas Hillary’s emails.
5. The guy at PRN realizes he never actually turned on the retention policy so he panics and starts deleting emails with BleachBit.
If I recall correctly, FOIA says "in the course of government business." Doesnt matter what system you use unless that system is destroying emails...which is illegal.
One of the top aides for Fauci admitted that Fauci and he used private email addresses to do government business. He even admitted ways he would use to avoid detection from FOIA.
Let say that's true. If someone is angry about Fauci but give a pass to the many, many other agency directors doing the same thing - that someone isn't really angry about the issue are they? It's just something to exploit and then forget about.
My guess is that you did not read the article (and, from reading most of the other comments, you are not alone). They were using "auditable email logging solution that keeps communications for whatever their applicable policy dictates." The issue is that the CDC had a policy where lower level employees had their emails deleted after 90 days (and there was nothing secret about this, it was their standard procedure), but there is disagreement over how long these lower level employees have to have their emails retained due to the CDC agreeing to a "Capstone" records retention program from the National Archives. The article has the details.
Issue being, the headline is written in a way that deliberately makes it sound like something nefarious is going on, where it sounds like an underlying disagreement over the interpretation of how long records were required to be retained due to this signing on to the Capstone program.
Regardless, this is the Internet, so I'm sure everyone with an axe to grind will read this as "WhaT tHe CDC doEsn'T wAnT yOu to Seeeee!!!!"
My point exactly. They may have been using a logging solution but whoever made the decision to keep communications for only 90 days was derelict in their duty, incompetent, or, deliberately trying to protect the agency from scrutiny.
Do you have any evidence that something nefarious wasn’t happening? That’s the point of communication through approved channels keeping records of said comms.
> Issue being, the headline is written in a way that deliberately makes it sound like something nefarious is going on, where it sounds like an underlying disagreement over the interpretation of how long records were required to be retained due to this signing on to the Capstone program.
From the article, it seems there was a dispute over which of two scenarios applied (1) the CDC agreed to implement the whole of the Capstone program but then unilaterally decided to stop applying it to lower-level employees; (2) the CDC agreed to implement it for senior employees only and never agreed to implement it for lower-level employees. Plaintiffs claimed the situation was (1), the CDC claimed it was (2), the judge decided based on the evidence (1) was more likely. The plaintiffs are GOP-aligned and the judge is an Obama appointee, so one must assume the judge is ruling based on the evidence, not partisan bias. Given that, it definitely makes the CDC and the DOJ look bad - if the judge’s ruling is correct, then they were presenting a false narrative to the Court
Using private email servers is quaint at this point, you may as well be using private carrier pigeons. These days all the smart malfeasants in office are using encrypted messaging apps with disappearing messages[1][2].
The wildest part is that in the case of the January 6 plotters, they were instructed to use Signal:
> In the declaration from the Department of Homeland Security, filed under penalty of perjury, DHS claims that following a data breach in December 2020, Wolf and Cuccinnelli were given temporary phones and instructed to use Signal to communicate in December 2020 and January 2021. DHS claims the agency retained the Signal messages, but given that one of Signal’s selling points is its “disappearing messages” feature, the accuracy of this claim may be questionable.
That tactic is strongly recommended against. If there is an indication that someone is evading discovery by using their private email, then the private email becomes discoverable. Judges take avoidance antics very poorly, generally.
Recommended against, sure, but does that actually matter?
I had to sue the City of Chicago because one of the Mayor's main policy consultants was using gmail for most of their work. Sure the judge frowned on it and I won the case.... but well over a year later after litigation ended and the relevant reporting already came out. Didn't notice until a couple months after litigation ended that a full year was missing from the doc, and we'd have had to litigate again.
Private email discovery is a very much “it depends” situation. Specifically the legal context.
For example, in NJ Board of Ed members are elected officials. If they conduct board business in their personal phones or other devices or accounts, they are discoverable.
However, a judge ruled that, to protect their privacy, if this arises then Open Public Records Act (or State version of FOIA) request search on private phones can only be done by the phone’s owner, not the OPRA administrator.
So suddenly you have to trust individual board members to actually search their phones properly and not just lie.
In my case a board member was in this situation and just said “I deleted those texts”.
Which maybe is a technical violation of OPRA, but the penalties are a slap on the wrist here in NJ.
Yes - the right way to avoid discovery is in-person meetings, telephone calls, and discussions with your lawyer cced.
I find it pretty understandable that politicians would end up with the personal and professional blurred together to be honest - it's not really a job that lends itself to a clear distinction between the two. You can't really separate the Obama Presidency from Obama.
CC'ing the lawyer is popular, but probably counter productive. Just including your lawyer in the email chain doesn't make the email privileged and it's a good signal that there is something in the email you don't want found.
> As for “flagrant misuse of the attorney-client privilege,” that refers to Google’s “Communicate with Care” initiative. Google trained its employees to add its in-house lawyers on “any written communication regarding Rev Share [RSA] and MADA.” ... It also instructed that, when “dealing with a sensitive issue” via email, to “ensure the email communication is privileged” employees could add a “lawyer in [the] ‘to’ field,” “mark ‘Attorney/Client Privileged,” and “ask the lawyer a question.” ... Google employees assiduously followed that advice... As a result, Google’s outside counsel in this case initially withheld tens of thousands records on the grounds of privilege, which ultimately were rereviewed, deemed not privileged, and produced to Plaintiffs... This creation of faux privileged materials, Plaintiffs contend, “demonstrates that Google intended to harm competition through its contracting practices and its supposed procompetitive justifications were simply pretext.” ...
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. GOOGLE LLC (1:20-cv-03010) (citations omitted)
>Yes - the right way to avoid discovery is in-person meetings, telephone calls, and discussions with your lawyer cced.Yes - the right way to avoid discovery is in-person meetings, telephone calls, and discussions with your lawyer cced.
Hey, Joey, we still gonna whack that guy tonight? CC'ing my lawyer here like I always do when we're planning to murder guys.
I mean, they definitely don’t, but also the CDC shouldn’t be deleting those records. In finance everything, and I mean everything, has to be kept for seven years.
This is the kind of comment that really can't be responded to without drawing accusations of trolling. But I'll risk it:
I'm genuinely curious what you mean? You're implying the existence of a conspiracy of some sort, but I checked and the document you mention is a real one and... not particularly controversial? It's here, for those curious: https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/disparities/mai/pdf/LGBTQ_I...
Basically from my perspective as one not steeped in the relevant conspiracy lore, this seems pretty boring and sincere. I'd assume that the "intentions" behind the document were exactly what it claims in its text: it's a somewhat boring and unimaginative guide for schools to use when implementing inclusivity programs for queer youth, something that almost all schools are doing in some form at this point.
Basically, spill it: what are you accusing the CDC of here?
I don't think GP was a troll implying the document itself was a problem. I think they were implying that the request for the document or information about its creation is the issue. At last that's not my reading.
The document's mere existence or quotes take from it, likely out of context, could easily be used as proof by various groups as some sort of agenda or other problematic behavior on the part of the CDC. There are plenty of groups out there happy to gin up any "evidence" they can, no matter how flimsy, to "prove" their world view and can do a lot of damage in the process. And if it's "official government evidence" that's "being hidden" all the better.
A simple example we've seen: focusing and promoting the damage caused by vaccines as proof all vaccines are bad and no one should ever be forced to have one. If a vaccine had a 20% side effect rate there are plenty of people who would go nuts for "official evidence" of lots of side effects. Even if that side effect was a headache in the 24 after injection and the vaccine was a one time cure for all disease.
Unfortunately there's a lot of bad faith acting out there, and many of those same people seem willing to harass the hell out of the people they view as evil.
>A simple example we've seen: focusing and promoting the damage caused by vaccines as proof all vaccines are bad and no one should ever be forced to have one. If a vaccine had a 20% side effect rate there are plenty of people who would go nuts for "official evidence" of lots of side effects. Even if that side effect was a headache in the 24 after injection and the vaccine was a one time cure for all disease.
If the side effects were truly negligible then people would not be trying to shout down and condescend to anyone who asks if there are side effects. People did experience side effects, some of those up to and including sudden death that very day, and yet people were blacklisted and banned for talking about it and demanding their bodily autonomy.
Furthermore, if the vaccines were effective, necessary, and safe, you wouldn't have to mandate their adoption and simultaneously say the unvaxxed are a threat to the vaxxed (yes, they really said that in the MSM). People would be fighting to get theirs first. That isn't exactly what happened, now is it?
>Unfortunately there's a lot of bad faith acting out there, and many of those same people seem willing to harass the hell out of the people they view as evil.
There called liberals these days /s.
Seriously though, people have a right to know what public servants are up to, and to criticize those people. If you can't handle that then you probably shouldn't be making policy or even working in government.
Requiring vaccination to be in certain public places or events (for those without medical complications) and mandatory sterilization are very VERY different things.
> If most employers require it, and your school requires it, and airlines require it to fly, then it's effectively mandatory.
Back to the above, working for someone is voluntary. And you certainly don't have to fly anywhere; that's a choice you make. Leaves only school, and that's often more or less voluntary too.
You missed the word "most" in there. If most employers mandate it, it's effectively mandatory. School is also effectively mandatory in this economy. Ergo, my point stands. Don't be intellectually dishonest.
The fact that you stalked my other comments and then engaged in personal attacks against me in other threads [1] (in addition to ideologue statements such as "I'm fairly sure there are schools ryun by anti-vaxxer nutjobs") proves conclusively that, in addition to completely disregarding the HN guidelines, you never had any intention of engaging in honest debate, that you only wish to push your political agenda regardless of facts or logic, that you're willing to lie and abuse words in order to do so, and that it's futile to respond. I do not need to defend myself against someone who behaves like this.
1) You've got your chronology and causality wrong[1]. No, I did not "stalk [your] other comment threads" after my other response to you.
2) And no, pointing out flawed logic in an argument is not a "personal attack".
3) My interests and motivations don't affect the validity of my arguments. I just said that working for a particular employer is a choice, not mandatory (here), and that assertions aren't proofs (elsewhere, at your link above). Hitler could say either of those, and it would still be correct. So could Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Emperor Bokassa, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or Churchill. See how it has nothing to do with ideology?
4) What you claim are "proofs" are still just assertions, and working for a particular employer is still a choice. You were wrong, that is all.
___
[1]: I think I've replied to you exactly twice before, and you posted this exact same (apart from the link) response to both. Since what you're saying is either "you attacked me elsewhere, and then followed me here!" or "you attacked me here, and then followed me elsewhere!", it's confusing as Hell. Which is supposed to be "elsewhere", and which "here"? It even took me a while to realise both links were valid, and not some weird loop... (I was beginning to speculate whether Dan G had moved one sub-thread or both into some offshoot. That is, after I realised they are two separate sub-threads in the first place.)
Your personal attack in a completely separate thread on Google/Meta: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41290855 2024-08-19 13:23:48, around half an hour later. You had no comments on that Google/Meta thread before I posted my first one at 12:49.
> 2) And no, pointing out flawed logic in an argument is not a "personal attack".
You're not pointing out flawed logic - you're using a comment I made on one thread to attack me in a completely separate thread. And you used the phrase "And, hey, at least I'm not the one calling my bare assertions "proofs." How's that for "intellectually dishonest"?" That's a personal attack.
> 3) My interests and motivations don't affect the validity of my arguments.
Of purely logical arguments, yes. However, someone who is fundamentally dishonest cannot be trusted to act in good faith, avoid concealing, distorting, or lying about evidence, or reason intellectually, or use words correctly without using alternative definitions or changing their use of them mid-argument. Your personal attacks, your blatant partisan political statements ("I'm fairly sure there are schools ryun by anti-vaxxer nutjobs"), and your lie about the chronology of your personal attack indicate that you're not interested in being honest, only pushing an agenda.
> 4) What you claim are "proofs" are still just assertions, and working for a particular employer is still a choice. You were wrong, that is all.
I do not need to defend myself against someone who behaves like this.
> I think I've replied to you exactly twice before, and you posted this exact same (apart from the link) response to both
Yes, because I think it's helpful for future readers of both threads to see that you're making personal attacks from one thread into another. That's important context when evaluating the truthfulness of the writers.
dang: if you read this, I apologize for degrading the quality of the discourse, but I feel a need to defend myself when other users engage in personal attacks and gaslighting against me, and it isn't flagged.
> > 1) You've got your chronology and causality wrong[1]. No, I did not "stalk [your] other comment threads" after my other response to you.
> My chronology is correct, and the available evidence points to you stalking:
You may have happened to get the internal chronology between those two comments right (or not; I don't know), but not the main thread thereof: I didn't look up either of those two comments because of the other; rather, I was already scrolling through your comments and came upon them both independently of each other.
Yeah -- the first (and possibly only?) personal attack among our interactions. (Unless you've kept it up; I don't care to go back and look for more, so you tell me.)
> Your personal attack in a completely separate thread on Google/Meta: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41290855 2024-08-19 13:23:48, around half an hour later. You had no comments on that Google/Meta thread before I posted my first one at 12:49.
There was no "personal attack" from me in that comment. Here's all I wrote:
"Neither of those proved anything; they're just assertions."
That's just pointing out that A is not the same as B. It doesn't talk about any persons at all. And:
"Reading some of your other comments, it's hard to think you're unaware of the difference. So what's this? Doesn't look all that much like arguing in good faith."
This was praise: I'm saying that until then, you had displayed what I read as the intellectual prowess to be aware that bare-faced assertions do not constitute proofs. Followed by my saddened observation that the only reason I could see for you saying something so obviously wrong was indicative of you not living up to that. Is that a "personal attack"? I don't think so: It's me telling what it looked like to me, because that is what it looked like to me. That's just a fact: It did.
Of course I denied "stalking" you, as I still do. Because I didn't.
> > 2) And no, pointing out flawed logic in an argument is not a "personal attack".
> You're not pointing out flawed logic
Yes I am. As explained here, and, AFAICR, several times before.
> you're using a comment I made on one thread to attack me in a completely separate thread.
1) Once you're into the paranoid mindset, it is of course inevitable that you will see it as an "attack". In actuality, it's just using a contrasting example to show that if anyone is having trouble with the concept of intellectual honesty, it's you -- just perfectly legitimately using an example from your own repertoire.
> And you used the phrase "And, hey, at least I'm not the one calling my bare assertions "proofs." How's that for "intellectually dishonest"?" That's a personal attack.
So, hey, you could just explain it: Do you actually think that you just saying that "this is the way it is" somehow proves that that is the way it is? If not, then how is arguing as if you actually did believe so not an example of -- your own -- intellectual dishonesty?
> > 3) My interests and motivations don't affect the validity of my arguments.
> Of purely logical arguments, yes.
Exactly. So try and engage with those, in stead of resorting to screeching "intellectually dishonest personal attack!" as an excuse not to. Or, you know, since (as we both know) the reason you're trying to avoid that is that you know you were wrong, just man the fuck up and admit that you were.
> However, someone who is fundamentally dishonest cannot be trusted to act in good faith, avoid concealing, distorting, or lying about evidence, or reason intellectually, or use words correctly without using alternative definitions or changing their use of them mid-argument.
Yeah, but I'm sure that if you work hard at it, you can rise above all that.
> Your personal attacks, your blatant partisan political statements ("I'm fairly sure there are schools ryun by anti-vaxxer nutjobs"), and your lie about the chronology of your personal attack indicate that you're not interested in being honest, only pushing an agenda.
1) As shown, there were no "personal attacks" from me. At least not initiating them, and certainly no more so than from you.
2) Again, political opinions, however blatantly partisan, have no effect on the validity of a logical statement. Be it a fanatical pro-vaxxer, a fanatical anti-vaxxer, Stalin, or St Francis of Assisi who says it, "Assertions are not proofs" can be evaluated on its own merits. (So why are you so reluctant to do so?)
3) There cannot be any "lie about the chronology of [my] personal attack" when there was no personal attack from me to have any chronology to begin with.
4) Sure, I do have an agenda here. It's a simple one: I'm for the truth, and against intellectual dishonesty. That's all. Didn't you even notice that that's all I've been talking about?!? I don't give a shit about your actual argument for or against, what was it again, "Google/Meta". In fact, I have no idea what the whole thread is about or which side you're on ("both equally big arseholes, each in their own way" would probably be my opinion, judging from your moniker for it), and I don't much care. (Far less so now, of course, at least as far as your particular opinion is concerned.)
> > 4) What you claim are "proofs" are still just assertions, and working for a particular employer is still a choice. You were wrong, that is all.
> I do not need to defend myself against someone who behaves like this.
Yeah, that's the cheap cop-out. "I can be as much of an asshole as I want and not get called out on it, as long as I can claim that the caller-out is an asshole!" Sure, some may buy the caller-out being an asshole... But they're still going to realise you're being one too. That cheap cop-out isn't the panacea you seem to think it is.
> > I think I've replied to you exactly twice before, and you posted this exact same (apart from the link) response to both
Explaining why I was a bit confused at the beginning there, is all. Genulinely thought some bug had caused the exact same post to be posted in two different threads, at first.
> Yes, because I think it's helpful for future readers of both threads to see that you're making personal attacks from one thread into another. That's important context when evaluating the truthfulness of the writers.
Yup. Let's see if most people think it's more truthful to point out that assertions are not proofs, or to screech "intellectually dishonest personal attack!" in response.
> dang: if you read this, I apologize for degrading the quality of the discourse, but I feel a need to defend myself when other users engage in personal attacks and gaslighting against me, and it isn't flagged.
Dan G: I do not apologise for pointing out that assertions are not proofs, nor for claiming that I'm not the one who is being intellectually dishonest for pointing it out. And I don't even think I need apologise for pointing out the possible abuse of the site's "flag" functionality in another, carefully-not-referenced by my interlocutor, thread where he apparently did do exactly what he's accusing me of here -- "stalked" me to it because of his grudge fom here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41298796 .
Injecting "Trump-allied legal group" is an incredible way to taint the news story and get people to take sides.
FOIA is a blessing, and does more for investigative journalist than almost anything else, but it doesn't work when our government is allowed to illegally covers its tracks.
To call America First Legal "Trump-aligned" is putting it mildly, and it would be incredible not to mention it:
> Stephen Miller, the former senior advisor to president Donald Trump, is the organization's founder and president. The vice president is Gene Hamilton, a Department of Justice official under Trump, and the executive director is Matthew Whitaker, the acting U.S. attorney general under Trump following Jeff Sessions's resignation. America First Legal's board of directors includes Whitaker and former chief of staff for Trump, Mark Meadows.
The name itself is even derived from a Trump campaign slogan.
Of course. It's explaining who the organization is that is filing it. That's basic journalism, right? It would seem a huge oversight to not mention it.
If it doesn't have a bearing on the story then it's the opposite of journalism.
> It would seem a huge oversight to not mention it.
I don't see how it would have any implications on the basic situation described, which is an internal CDC issue concerning their handling of documents during employee transition.
I think what you're basically saying is "it would otherwise be a missed opportunity to fling political mud." Which, to me, is _not_ journalism.
> “The Biden-Harris Administration was actively destroying the records of federal employees at the CDC in blatant violation of the law — and we are pleased that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered a stop to their illegal conduct,” America First Legal’s executive director Gene Hamilton said in a statement. “The Biden-Harris Administration’s politicization of records management must end.”
Even though the decision shows that CDC has likely been doing this since at least 2016.
That quote is actually in the article and so part of its context and substance. Maybe you meant to point out it was not the author that made the statement?
I used to believe left leaning reporting was more free of bias and manipulation until I realized they often use this tactic. They will not say something themselves, but find someone to quote that makes the point they want made.
They also use build up, where they go back in time and recant the past before moving to the present where they then show the reader what to see through the framing they want them to see it. Some outlets/journailists are better than others, and sometimes it's not what I'm describing. But this method of manipulating public perception of issues and events exists.
At least with sources on the right they are blatant and obvious, easy to pick out and pick apart what they are wrong about.
If you've seen promos for GroundNews recently, I'd highly recommend it. It doesn't solve the bias problem, but as an individual it starts uncovering the ways our news media put their fingers on the scales of society.
>That quote is actually in the article and so part of its context and substance. Maybe you meant to point out it was not the author that made the statement?
Correct; the article/author/Politico isn't flinging any mud it/themselves so long as it/they is/are simply quoting or journaling verbatim what someone said or what happened.
Of course it could be, nobody is compelling publishers. The question is should it be, and the answer has traditionally been: depends, is it relevant? Which brings us back to the original question of merit.
It also depends a lot on the standards of the publisher versus the expectations of the readership. Personally, I agree with your implication: I can't think of any papers today who wouldn't choose to include this information—as red meat is an important part of the modern news diet—but hey, in a world of unprejudiced readers who weighed legal matters solely on the basis of evidence, I can certainly imagine it not being brought up, and those readers still being well-informed.
Could there be a misunderstanding? Any organization, Good or Bad, has the right to request materials from the government, and anyone has the right to impugn their motives. (Someone who shouts "ad hominem" in politics has, of course, their own motives.)
