
Elena Kagan's  White House Emails - robg
http://www.elenasinbox.com/
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devin
Forgive my ignorance, but I cannot be alone on this one: Just exactly what the
heck am I looking at?

~~~
anigbrowl
Official White House email transcripts from when Supreme Court nominee Elena
Kagan worked as Bill Clinton's staff lawyer.

The clever bit: putting it in a webmail interface rather than making people
scroll through a 1000 page pdf and double check every header.

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anigbrowl
I'd usually flag for lack of hack, but I have to admit this presentation is
innovative and serves a worthwhile public purpose by making the information so
accessible.

~~~
luigi
I'd argue that this is a wonderful example of civic hacking, but then again
I'm biased, as I work for the guy who built this.

<http://www.google.com/search?q=civic+hacking>

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bm98
What's with all the return receipts? Do people really use return receipts that
much?

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eplanit
She's an attorney -- such audit/evidence trails are essential in her
profession.

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joubert
Email clients don't have to honor read receipts. In fact, apps such as
Outlook, have an option where you can turn it off. And I've use a Lotus Notes
macro that removed them.

~~~
jamie
Yea, and I doubt that the footers lawyers append to every email mean much in
terms of disclosure, but that doesn't stop law firms from trying it anyway.

I think read receipts fall into the category of "good faith effort", and not
much more.

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wrs
Read <http://sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/elenas-inbox/> \-- this data is
extracted from a PDF of data OCRed from a printout from a web interface to the
actual email archive. Yuck.

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pmichaud
Incredible, I love it. My first instinct is to say every public official
should have this.

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sdurkin
Then they'd stop using email. One of the nice things about email is that a lot
of the time people don't realize they're on the record.

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robg
Federal employees know all emails are going to be kept. It's part of their
training and it's required by federal law. I'm not sure though about
individual state and local laws though.

And if they were going to stop using email, what would replace it? Personally,
I can't see these busy individuals doing all business over the phone.
Blackberries are also covered by federal law.

~~~
jufemaiz
I seem to remember a certain VP nominee using her personal email for work
purposes in a different public role...

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hc
This is an outbox.

