Death By Email Blog

The Secret is Out

Personal information about all 5,247 students of the University of Illinois was accidentally sent as an email attachment in a message to 714 engineering students on Friday.  The spreadsheet contained each the name, e-mail address, major, gender, race and ethnicity, class, date admitted, spring 2007 grade point average, cumulative GPA, plus local address and phone number for each student.  Fortunately, social security numbers and university identification numbers were not included.

"It was a mistake, an accident. It was completely unintentional," said UI spokeswoman Robin Kaler to the News-Gazette.

"A College of Engineering staff person sent a mass e-mail at 7:51 a.m. on Friday to all electrical and computer engineering students. The note was to inform the 714 students about a new class on Lego robotics.

"But the person who sent the mass e-mail attached a spreadsheet containing information on all 5,247 students in the college.  ...

"Kaler said the staff person had used the spreadsheet to gather the e-mail addresses of the students.

"As soon as the person realized what had happened, they went immediately to the associate dean," Kaler said.

"At 10:08 a.m. the staff member sent students a follow-up e-mail asking the recipients to delete the file.  The university's central administration was also notified."

Justice Dept. Claims Exemption from Freedom of Information Act

The Justice Department filed papers that claim that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act because it has no substantial authority independent of President Bush, according to a report in the Associated Press.

Specifically, the Department is claiming that the Office of Administration does not have to release its records regarding the missing White House emails. 

This rationale seems to be new and may be used to expand the boundaries of government secrecy.  As a matter of fact, the Justice Department web site lists, which lists people responsible for responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, includes the Office of Administration.  Specifically, the site names under "EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATION":

• Carol Ehrlich
  FOIA Officer
  5001 New Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20503

Clearly, it had been the expectation of the Department that the Office would handle FOI requests.  Ms. Ehrlich has the job title "FOIA Officer." At least, it had been its expectation until now.

The Departments claim is an attempt to end a case started by the National Security Archive, a private group advocating public disclosure of government secrets, to release information related to the missing White House emails. When the Office of Administration finally denied the private group's request in June of this year, the office said it was not an "agency" as defined by the Freedom of Information Act and was therefore not subject to the law's requirements.

The Office of Administration "has certainly acted like an agency in the past," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, according to the AP. 

New Email Archiving Whitepaper

InBoxer just released a new whitepaper available for download entitled "Email Archiving Requirements For Schools and Local Governments."  Other information on InBoxer's email archiving is also available.

Historic Email Investigation Begins

In what may be the largest ever investigation involving email, two leading UK supermarket chains, Tesco and Asda, were ordered to hand over millions of email messages to the Competition Commission. 

The number of emails to be reviewed by the companies could overwhelm the Competition Commission.  It was reported that Asda alone will submit more than 11-million email messages.  Yet, the companies will first need to assemble the messages and review them for presentation.  The total IT and legal cost has not yet been estimated.

Asda is owned by US giant Wal-Mart. Tesco is Britain's biggest retailer. The two were issued so-called section 109 notices, which force the supermarkets to comply.

The Competition Commission alleges that the two companies threatened suppliers to force them to lower their prices. "Tesco and Asda are alleged to have threatened they would drop suppliers if they did not offer discounted prices," reported The Scotsman.

The investigation will probably bring light to the email archiving policies of major enterprises. 

"Courts won't look kindly on deleted email," reported Computerworld UK. “It is important for businesses to demonstrate a clear policy on cleaning out emails. If they end up in court it would not look good if particular emails were being destroyed rather than there being a clear policy.”

"Menacing" Email Causes Fallout in Bucks County, PA

“Many professionals, consultants, contractors and loyal GOP supports have benefited handsomely by GOP leadership Bucks County wide,” said an email sent by Northampton Township Supervisor Vincent J. Deon on July 16th.  Deon's e-mail, which fell into Democratic Party hands, said many county employees and contractors owed their jobs to Republicans' control of the county courthouse and should be expected to help the party achieve its goal of registering 5,000 new voters this summer and fall, reported The Morning Call.

The email message was described as "over the top" by Republican Campaign manager Mike Walsh, in the Buck's County.  (Courier-Times) Various newspapers used the word menacing to describe the message.

Friday, Deon resigned as a committeeman.  In a letter to GOP Chairman Harry Fawkes, Deon wrote, “I do not want to be a distraction used by the Democrats in their campaign of fear and distortion.” (The Intelligencer)

While the Democrats did nothing to cause the original email, they have taken advantage of it.  10,000 phone calls were placed Thursday afternoon said the Democrat's press director, Dave Mellet. (The Intelligencer) 

“Taking a page straight out of the Bush administration handbook, a Bucks County Republican official sent a "menacing' e-mail to courthouse employees, reminding them that "many people owe their jobs to GOP leadership,' so they should help register new Republican voters.

“Tell Republican Commissioners Charley Martin and Jim Cawley to keep Karl Rove tactics in D.C. It's time for a change at the county courthouse in 2007. Please vote Democrat,” the call said.

Republican Walsh called the Democrats' calls a “cheap trick” and “intimidating” to voters. “We will not sink to their level,” Walsh said.

Email is "Not Perfect for Emergencies”

The University of Iowa went on alert Monday after receiving two anonymous emails claiming that four pipe bombs had been left on the campus.  University officials sprang into action, according to KMA radio.  The bomb squad was put on stand-by.  Facilities and maintenance personnel searched for suspicious items.  And, 45,000 emails were quickly sent to warn people affiliated with the institution.

If only the email system had been in such a hurry.  It took 1-1/2 to 2 hours to deliver the messages, U. of I. spokesman Steve Parrott said Tuesday to the Iowa City Press-Citizen. 

“It’s not perfect for emergencies,” Parrott said.

Will Generation Y Have Love Letters to Remind Them?

A very touching column in Sunday's Atlanta-Journal Constitution by Theresa Walsh Giarrusso, who found old love letters as she and her husband were packing to move.  She wonders whether the next generation will have this experience or whether it will be lost in old email files.  Opening up Gmail simply is not as romantic.

"While we were packing up our house to move, my husband ran across a box of old love letters. Some were from me to Michael. Some were from Michael’s father when he was stationed overseas and some were from Michael’s mother before her death. There were also a few from Michael’s high-school girlfriends.  ...

"I asked my brother-in-law’s 26-year-old girlfriend if she had any love letters. She said they were all on e-mail. She said about the only paper mail she sends anymore is postcards from where she’s traveled.

"I think it’s sad that if my brother-in-law does marry this girl they won’t have any tangible evidence of their early affection - at least none that they won’t have to print out first.

"Although better organized, it’s not quite as romantic to open up your laptop and search your Gmail database for a letter. Part of the pleasure is running across love letters and letting your mind slip back to another time.  ..."

You can read the rest at Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

Email-Free Fridays

Believing that there is a danger from email overload, British Energy CIO, Ian Campbell has introduced a series of 'email-free Fridays' in the IT department, according to an interview in Silicon.com.

"You try not to send emails to each other but go and see them or talk to them and spend time with them. And although we know it will never eliminate email at the moment it actually helps to spend time with people."

He further stated:

"Collaboration is a big one for us. It's a huge productivity saving. If we were five people and I sent out a document to four people and everyone sent back their version plus one to everyone else you've suddenly got 16 versions of the same document. How do you control that? Collaboration puts it in one place. What will happen in the future as collaboration and other tools come on board is we will filter and will pool what we want. Over the next couple of years that will make our lives easier."

One-Third of Workers Suffer From "Email Stress"

British workers are suffering stress from an avalanche of email and the need to respond quickly.  A survey of 177 participants showed the following:

• 64% of the participants said they looked at their email more than once an hour, with 35 per cent claiming to check every 15 minutes. (Daily Mail)
• When researchers fitted monitors to their computers, workers were found to be viewing e-mails up to 40 times an hour. (The Times)
• About 33 per cent said they felt stressed by the volume of e-mails and the need to reply quickly.(The Times)
• 28 per cent said they felt “driven” when they checked messages because of the pressure to respond.  (The Times)
• Just 38 per cent of workers were relaxed enough to wait a day or longer before replying. (The Times)
• Female workers felt under greater pressure to respond than men. (Daily Mail)
• Employees in creative jobs or work that requires long periods of concentration to get an important project finished, such as academics, writers, architects and journalists, were likely to be worst affected. (Daily Mail)

The widely reported study was just released by professors Karen Renaud. a computer scientist at Glasgow University and Judith Ramsay, a psychologist at Paisley University in Scotland.  The study has the boring title of "The Influence of Self-Esteem and Locus of Control on Perceived Email-Related Stress" and appears in the November 2007 issue of Computers in Human Behavior.

They concluded: “E-mail has become an indispensable tool in business. However, there is evidence that e-mail can exert a powerful hold over its users and that many computer users experience stress as a result of e-mail-related pressure.”

Ms Renaud said in the Times: “E-mail is the thing that now causes us the most problems in our working lives. It’s an amazing tool but it’s got out of hand.”

Instant Messages and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure

I am often asked about why one should archive email messages and should not archive instant messages (IM).  The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and various Freedom of Information Act rules require you to produce anything that is saved, but do not require you to produce things that are not saved.

Email should be archived because many copies of messages may exist across your entire organization.  For examples, users may have emails on their own PCs.

But, unless you are in one of the regulated industries that specify that IM must be stored (such as brokerages), the odds are that nobody is saving the conversations.  Therefore, if you start archiving IM, you will create new discoverable evidence.

I just finished reading an excellent article in the August 2007 issue of The Metropolitan Corporate Counsel by Timothy Carroll that actually says it is not only dangerous to archive IM, it may be illegal.

The article mentions that it is dangerous due to the "liability considerations associated with creating and then retaining harmful communications" that are not otherwise stored.  It further quotes the ePolicy institute as saying, "50 percent of IM users send or receive potentially risky and legally harmful information such as workplace gossip, jokes and confidential information via instant messaging."

But, the illegal part was new to me:

"the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act ("ECPA"), protects against unwarranted interception or retrieval of electronic communications. Title I of the ECPA, known as the Wiretap Act, makes it a criminal offense to "intentionally intercept any wire, oral or electronic communication." Because IM chats are conversations occurring in real time, similar to telephone calls, an employer's monitoring of IM conversations may also implicate the provisions of the Wiretap Act. Where data access, rather than message interception, is the issue, Title II of the ECPA, the Stored Wire and Electronic Communications and Transactional Records Act (the "Stored Communications Act") applies."

While it is clear that email archiving is important as a way to protect companies, IM archiving may actually do direct harm.