September 12, 2003
Public employees' private email on public computers is private
From today's SP TImes:
Public employees do not have to turn over private e-mail to the public, even when using government computers at work, the Florida Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The ruling was a defeat for First Amendment advocates and the St. Petersburg Times, which had sued the city of Clearwater for access to the e-mails of two city employees who sent and received messages about a private business in which they had invested. The city allowed the employees to determine which e-mails should be made public.
Written by Justice Barbara Pariente, the unanimous opinion found that e-mails are not public documents simply because they are created or stored on government computers. The ruling did not address who should decide what is public.
In an era when business increasingly is conducted electronically, critics worry the ruling erases an important layer of public oversight, leaving government employees to police themselves and taxpayers forced to trust the judgment of those workers.
"It's a disturbing turn of events, certainly," said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation. "Sometimes that trust can be abused."
Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, a longtime supporter of open records law who intervened on behalf of the Times, also was disappointed with the decision. "If the taxpayers pay for the computers," he said, "they ought to have the right to see what's on them."
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