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Mayor rejects request for data on top aides’ computer use
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WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Two weeks after revealing that city employees were using their computers to visit pornographic Web sites, Mayor Adrian Fenty’s regime has refused a request to explain what top aides to the mayor are doing with their computers.
The Examiner filed a Freedom of Information Act request Jan. 14, asking the city to explain what Web sites its top officials were visiting on their government-issued computers. Nine days later, Fenty called a news conference to announce he had fired nine employees for visiting pornographic Web sites and promised to crack down on the abuse of public computers.
In a letter dated Friday, Fenty lieutenant Thorn Pozen denied The Examiner’s request, claiming the Web site histories “are not government records” and that, even if they were, the request was “overly broad.”
“Accordingly, your request is denied,” Pozen wrote.
Fenty campaigned on a promise to bring “transparency” to District government, but his administration continues to flout city open-records laws more than a year into his term, critics said.
Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, told The Examiner that using FOIA to see what government employees are doing with their Internet accounts is “new ground” that’s never been litigated.
But she said that, as a matter of principle, governments shouldn’t have anything to fear by disclosing the information to the taxpayers who underwrite the computers’ use.
“That is a public computer, and there is great public interest in how public employees are spending their time using those publicly paid-for computers,” Dalglish said.
Last year, The Examiner used a similar request to check the Web habits of members of the Board of Education. The response revealed that some members were using their government computers to visit non-work-related Web sites.
bmyers@dcexaminer.com
Comments from Examiner Readers
4:30 PM MST on Thu., Jan. 24, 2008 re: "9 D.C. workers fired for viewing porn"
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11:02 AM MST on Thu., Jan. 24, 2008
re: "9 D.C. workers fired for viewing porn"
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defense for the defenseless said:
I'd like to know how they "defined" porn, many websites you go to to conduct gang research come up "porn" in nature but this is part of some jobs to conduct research, etc.
105 agree | 87 disagree
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GAB said:
Can't the District government give a contract to the Judge Rotenberg Center to shock an employee at his desk if he's surfing porn?
100 agree | 77 disagree
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