E-mail

Alaska Republican watchdog Andree McLeod filed a lawsuit Friday seeking another round of Gov. Sarah Palin’s e-mail messages and a court order preventing the would-be vice president from destroying the records.

McLeod initially filed one request under Alaska’s open records law for Palin’s e-mail in June, long before Palin joined Sen. John McCain on the Republican presidential ticket. Friday’s suit stems from that request and an additional records request she filed on Oct. 1.

The debate over access to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s e-mails may not matter if hackers have their way.

Tough day for Virginia's anti-spam law: The state supreme court on Friday declared it "unconstitutionally overbroad" in restricting not just commercial but all types of speech in mass e-mail messages, The Associated Press reports.

Responding to a proverbial elbow jab to the ribcage from lawyers for the Detroit Free Press, embattled Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will testify after all in the newspaper's Freedom of Information lawsuit against the city.

Although most states treat e-mail messages exchanged by government employees like any other government records, Hawaii has no laws that require state officials to actually preserve or maintain such messages -- even if they would otherwise be considered government records.

More than 700 pages of e-mails messages between New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine and his former girlfriend, labor union leader Carla Katz, are to be released to the public within two weeks, a judge ruled Friday.

But the Attorney General’s Office plans to challenge Superior Court Judge Paul Innes’ ruling, arguing both that the e-mail messages are private correspondence, and that they are protected by executive privilege.

A former North Carolina state agency worker spoke out last month, saying the state's unwritten policy is to delete e-mails daily. Gov. Mike Easley and his staff have denied the accusation, but appointed a committee to review the policies for maintaining e-mails and text messages.

Media representatives told a state panel that every single e-mail to and from a state office constitutes a public record and should be archived.

As embattled Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick fights to stay in power, members of his staff have undertaken an e-mail campaign to rail against the reporters who have written about his unscrupulous dealings.

The White House disclosed to a federal court on Friday that some of its computer hard drives from before October 2003 have been destroyed.

Open government laws are often the focus of efforts when journalists and journalism organizations want to increase the openness of governments, but an article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian reminds us that simple technological fixes can often be an equally effective first step.