Greetings Editor-in-chief Rob Mitchel,
As a long time subscriber to the Barre Times Argus, I read with great
interest and sympathy about your struggles to obtain electronic based
correspondence from the Vermont State government in investigation of
government wrongdoing. I have also been through the expensive and
lengthly obfuscation that the State Bureaucracy wishes to put you through.
So, I would like to share with you some observations and suggestions.
First a proposition. If it cost $20,000.00 to send these emails
originally, would they have ever been sent? So, reason demands the common
man ask; what is the difference in the cost between now and then? Here is
what I know. How the State Bureaucracy delivers the email evidence to you
when you request it from them under the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA)
is in the Portable Document Format (PDF). What basically happens here is
that the Bureaucracy takes the email message, prints it out on paper, and
then scans this printed document back in PDF form, appending it to the
rest of the PDF'd documents to be released as one large PDF file,
typically delivered on a Compact Disk (CD). In my experience, this method
will not include any attachments or header information, additionally,
these pictures of emails as released are not easily search-able using
common text processing tools.
I would recommend that you demand on behalf of the public who paid for
these emails that they be released to you in native Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol (SMTP) format. In this format the document remains in the
original digital, search-able format, as this is the format that the
document was originally transmitted and received in. In this format,
emails include header and also attachments, which are encoded in
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) format, and again are easily
searched using common text processing tools. Should the State indicate
that it cannot deliver the email to you in this format, have your
advocates point out that this is the standard way that all email is
transfered on the Internet without exception.
Finally, I would like to respectfully inquire as to where the Vermont
State Bureaucracy arrived at the idea that they should expend any of my
tax money redacting emails that the citizens of Vermont, as represented by
your responsible journal, own and have a right to view. The public nature
of Vermont State emails is made clear to all Bureaucrats when they sign a
document generically called a Rules Of Behavior (ROB) before they are
allowed access to the taxpayer owned computer. Additionally every time
they sign onto the Vermont Government Network, a reiteration of the public
nature of the information is displayed on the screen, and they must
actively acknowledge it. The Bureaucrats involved in the current scandal
were told in their employee orientation that they should take care of what
they write and consider before sending, as any email correspondence they
author might end up in a newspaper, as is the case here. As public
officials employed by the State of Vermont they are explicitly and
repeatedly briefed that their official correspondence carries a severely
limited expectation of privacy. The unclassified email system operated by
the State of Vermont is a public system. Any Personal Identifying Data
(PID) or Privately Issued Credentials (PIC) in these emails directly
contravenes the stated security policies of the Vermont State Government
and is a violation of Vermont State Rules and Policies in itself.
In summary, acquiring publicly owned emails specifically requested by the
Vermont Press Bureau, and any other publicly produced emails, demands
that you ask for and accept nothing less than Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol (SMTP) format data with Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions
(MIME) attachments. For further information on these standards, please
refer to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Request For
Comments(RFC) RFC 821 and RFC 5321, Google these strings for detailed
information, and please continue to shine a bright light on the waste,
corruption and fraud perpetuated on the Citizens of Vermont by the current
Vermont State Bureaucracy.
Sincerely,
Paul Flint
Director
Barre Open Systems Institute
(802) 479-2360
(802) 595-9365 Cell
/************************************
Based upon email reliability concerns,
please send an acknowledgment in response to this note.
Paul Flint
Barre Open Systems Institute
17 Averill Street
Barre, VT
05641
http://www.bosivt.org
http://family.flint.com/flint
skype: flintinfotech
Work: (202) 537-0480
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