> potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges
What kinds of things could Musk and Abbott be discussing that could lead to an exchange of intimate messages? The only (non-jokey) thing I can think of would be discussions about the kinds of accommodations Abbott might need at SpaceX or Tesla events due to being paralyzed.
Elon's a large employer in Texas in industries with legal hurdles so it's unsurprising he ends up in email exchanges with senior politicians there, even more so since he's decided he's a political figure. He also has a... interesting line in quips, opinions and personal remarks which I imagine Abbott is happy to play along with when he's thinking more how much a friendlier relationship with Elon can boost his personal profile, state employment figures and bank balance and less about what other people reading it might think.
So yeah, there's probably some genuinely not-for-public consumption stuff about Tesla/SpaceX future business initiatives and a whole lot of racism and snarky comments about people that are supposed to be political allies...
Edit: wondering if the downvote brigade are supposed to be signalling that Elon doesn't have any legitimate reason to start conversations about his companies with Texas politicians or that private conversations with Elon would never end up segueing into something that might be embarrassing. Not sure which of those opinions is more ridiculous really...
Much of the point of transparency laws is to shine light on secret shenanigans between the wealthy and powerful, and the government. Communications that shouldn't be made public, like between crime victims and certain government officials should be treated with clearly delineated special handling. That should be rare. Not part of informal email exchanges. That's why various government bodies have closed sessions for certain meetings. Embarrassment after the fact isn't a good reason to redact. If Elon is unclear on the concept, maybe he shouldn't be doing government work.
My downvote was to indicate that I reject your implication that there are legitimate reasons to keep his communications with government officials private. "Government" is, in most instances, replaceable with "Public". If you don't want your private business to be public knowledge, do not do business with the public. And if you do business with the public, expect that business to be public. There are mechanisms to protect "private" information that do not require government secrecy or redactions. Private businesses use them all the time. They are fallible, sure, but so is everything. More importantly, they are subject to subpoena and other legal remedies so they can be made public if necessary, but they are otherwise private (unlike email). And no, it doesn't matter to me what levels of harm can be done by the lack of secrecy; that's not a reason to be secret, that's a reason to not provide so much harm exposure. Government should be minimizing risk, not providing mechanisms that engender it. Besides, if my refusal to show ID to a cop with no RAS can still get me arrested, obviously the state understands the law as a "do the bad thing, sort it out later" kind of setup. So show us the emails and let's start working to fix the fallout.
But the position that because an institution works on behalf of the public, every communication it receives should be public seems naive. The entire publicly funded criminal justice service depends on secrecy to function, for example. Similarly, the public doesn't need to be know the budget and shortlist of possible locations for the next Gigafactory or how to build a Falcon 9 any more than it needs to know the identities of whistleblowers, and if you don't redact that information, you don't get people blowing whistles or sharing their expansion plans with governors or IP with NASA. Without the ability to deliver suitcases full of cash in response to a private conversation being inconvenienced in the slightest.
As you've already pointed out, we have such things as subpoenas already to deal with the actual criminal conduct. This is a better approach than "don't write anything you wouldn't share with everyone", not least because the latter actually normalizes every interaction with government officials being a request for an off-the-record in-person conversation.
> the public doesn't need to be know the budget and shortlist of possible locations for the next Gigafactory
Putting aside your other sensible comments, this one is true from Tesla's side, but false from the government side. I don't "need" to know what Tesla is doing, but I "need" to know what the government is doing. Let's say Tesla is weighing its options where to open the next factory, I want to know what governments are doing to attract (or not) their business.
I mean, the impact of that usually fairly public anyway, especially if it involves subsidies or legislative changes. Companies are free to whinge about legislators they consider obstructive too; Elon loves it!
I'll put it another way. Florida is quite happy to send state officials very publicly to small events explicitly focused in reeling in businesses, do a very public presentation about how they don't do socialist things like handouts but do offer them material support in building out their US base in Florida, and then hang around for networking. It's very much part of their jobs, and it's advertised and reported on, and in at least some cases open to the general public. So if I'd wanted to sidle up to Jared Purdue and explain why Florida's state investment fund should underwrite part of the cost of a space propulsion facility near Cape Canaveral, I was at a small event nowhere near Florida where I totally could have done that recently. But if I have no expectations that commercially sensitive data will be protected I'm almost certainly not going to consider following up by sharing financial projections and plans and evidence for his staff to review (and yet would be free to proceed if he can make things happen based purely on 5 minutes conversations or suitcases stuffed with cash) . I suspect Florida voters would prefer their DOT to be able to have that proper follow-up though (or would if the plant was likely to happen in the next 2 years and likely to end up in Florida...)
If the public wants more insight into what governments are doing to attract business you get that from budget transparency, formal review processes, publicised state support thresholds, independent anti corruption monitoring etc and of course PR about success stories, not by placing all written correspondence with businesses into the public domain, a measure which will severely limit their ability to [selectively] attract business. First thing I'd want the government to do to attract business is to respect the same confidences everyone else does, and that means where the new plant might be is non public information.
Likewise Elon can threaten or offer campaign contributions to a governor over the phone and probably does so, but if he wants to actually do the responsible thing and email lots and lots of arguments and evidence to try to persuade a governor that vetoing a bill is a bad thing, it's probably reasonable to assume that some of that is commercially sensitive (ironically if it's financial or technical details redacted from long emails is actually material to changing the governor's mind, it's probably because the case is better than the generic "yay Gigafactory, yay looser autonomous test regimes" arguments that get trotted out). Better to have a paper trail only suitably cleared people can see than nobody prepared to leave any paper trail at all.
And yeah, it's Elon, so there's probably other stuff that has nothing to do with his companies redacted too, but that's another issue entirely
Sorry it seems naive to you. But if someone is going into business with me (a part of the public), I expect to be able to see EVERYTHING that business has communicated with "the public" (which includes me). Like the other commenter said: I do need to know where the government plans to allow the next gigafactory or falcon 9 launchpad.
As far as whistleblowers and other such information, it's a nice deflection, but it's obviously irrelevant to this topic. I didn't claim anything about how the government should publicize everything, I made claims about what the government should share regarding business deals. Steelman, don't strawman.
And as far as your fear-mongering about everyone suddenly insisting on off-the-record conversations, A) it's a laughable premise; most people don't mind their business with the government being public on account of knowing what "public" means and B) anyone who tried to use off-the-record interaction as a means to circumvent public scrutiny would leave a trail of their behavior that could be relied upon in trial or legislative debate to evidence a law broken or a loophole to be made illegal. Simple as.
You can expect to see it all you like; you won't unless and until you can persuade enough other members of the public to vote for a platform of amending freedom of information legislation to stop redacting sensitive information (unless its a whistleblower identity apparently)
I'm sorry you find it "laughable" and "fear-mongering" that people will switch to off the record conversations. Perhaps you are not aware that government officials already spend most of their day talking to people in unrecorded conversations, with many of those conversations being with representatives of business.
As it is, companies will also happily follow those questions up with slide decks, projections, technical details and requests for information etc which helps substantiate their pitch or their case for funding or their objection to a bill (unless they're actually doing something dodgy, in which case creating a paper trail is counterproductive). They will not send this information if that is expected to be publicly disclosed because they don't want everybody knowing that they are emailing Texas officials about a Texan location before they've even decided if they actually want one or how much they're spending on widgets from which suppliers. Never mind other intriguing possibilities like NASA circulating all the technical documentation SpaceX has shared with them.
If you are truly convinced that 'most people don't mind their business with the government being public on account knowing what "public" means', I advise you to test this hypothesis by emailing some businesses asking them to share unredacted content of emails they have recently exchanged with government officials (a no-effort filter on .gov domains in their own mailbox is sufficient for this experiment). Let us know how many unredacted emails they share with you...
It's hilarious that you seem to think that what you suggested is tantamount to what I suggested. You also don't seem to have actually worked with the government or requested any information via foia requests, based on your descriptions.
In any case, good luck on whatever you're trying to convince whoever your trying to convince of.
No, the definition of corruption is offering illicit personal incentives
Pointing out that Tesla might be prepared to do x, y and z in the state in only the regulatory framework concerning p and q is compatible with their plans is plain old lobbying. Whether this is more good because it means lots of jobs for Texas or bad because the existing regulatory framework does an excellent job of protecting roads/labour/investors is exactly the sort of decision we give to elected representatives, for better and for worse.
If the regulatory framework gets changed and then Tesla sets up a new plant, we probably see the governor issue press releases about it. Same goes for if local government chooses to subside the plant construction to "bring jobs to the state". That doesn't mean all the questions any politician or government agency actually trying to do the right thing should ask to establish the credibility of the proposal should be asking aren't legitimately trade secrets.
Negotiating is difficult if you show your hand. It is arguably beneficial to both the state and Elon that the e-mails stay redacted. I agree it is unfortunate though.
Sensitive negotiations like those should be handled by low-level bureaucrats with supervision, not by the damned Governor. Again, negotiating directly with a state governor is obviously corrupt no matter what the contents. This would have been instantly clear to any American back when we were an advanced nation.
If the result of the negotiations are in good faith and beneficial for his constituents, then it is not corruption. Of course, that's open to interpretation.
Corruption is usually when there is personal benefit to the politician themselves.
Regarding your edit, I upvoted your comment at first, but instantly downvoted once I got to the edit. Whining about imaginary interet points is not a constructive discussion worth having and in my subjective opinion does not belong on HN.
Fair, not whining about downvotes is in the guidelines. I would point out I got a constructive response out of it though.
Mostly I was just amused by rapid fall before I got any replies and the possibility I might have managed to offend both ardently pro and anti Elon people with a relatively anodyne post :)
> segueing into something that might be embarrassing
Like his support of racist organizations in Europe? Or hiding information about failures of self-driving automobiles? Or unexpected layoffs? There's probably a lot more, involving SpaceX, etc.
Honestly, that first one alone merits a lot of hairy eyeballing, but I despise racists and hate that my home state is associated with them.
Not legal issues in the sense issues contested in court, rather they mean to say the combination of regulations and compliance to state laws that any business particularly a large one with significant physical footprint[1] would need to comply with. Politicians are in the business of passing and enforcing those laws or giving exceptions to compliance.
[1] A lot of less permits would be needed for 10,000 member software company compared to a rocket launch provider or a manufacturing unit.
> Politicians are in the business of passing and enforcing those laws or giving exceptions to compliance.
I think this is what's confusing me - I'd expect politicians to pass laws, but enforcement might be the job of police, tax authorities, workplace safety inspectors, etc.
And giving politicians say over who laws apply to sounds like a fast track to corruption.
It is a fast track to corruption without a strong independent judiciary yes.
politicians have a dual role they are the legislative authority and also are the executive (when in power) . They don’t do those roles concurrently but the same people switch between those two.
The actual execution happens by police lawyers or tax authorities as you say, but the direction and leadership is set by the politicians. When to prosecute, whom to and what punishment to ask for and so on.
In the US system there is additional complexity as what are nominally administrative positions like judge, sheriff etc also elected. So by definition those people also have to be politicians.
What I'm reading is that if you want to preserve confidentiality, you can mix trade secrets into your communication. Sounds like an easy thing with no downside.
Yes, unfortunately... the right outcome here should be corporate lawyers saying "companies should NOT add trade secrets when talking to the government because it will leak", but instead the public can't know what the government is doing because it might hurt a company. US 101, doing what's best for business over its people.
I mean, without the trade secret exemption that's basically any written exchange with government....
I'm not seeing much to be gained by making it impossible for governments to do due diligence with many suppliers because they'd rather turn down the contract than broadcast such information to their competitors (not sure it'd jive particularly well with public company control over what is and isn't public information either)...
The fact is, spacex does not have any "trade secrets" that they should be dropping into communication with a government official when speaking about policy or a future contract.
It's not like Musk would be dropping in things like vendors or material composition when talking to Abbott.
The upside of working with the government for a contract is that usually means a lot of money. The price should be full transparency as that's our tax dollars. Secret government communications should pretty much always be seen as highly suspicious.
I mean, it doesn't 'stop corruption' because you can arrange to send money to secret bank accounts verbally, which is not subject to FOIA. Anyone considering emailing about something actually illegal needs to worry about subpoenas far more than freedom of information anyway.
But it does mean that the answer to "can you disclose more about the functioning of technology X" or "can you tell us more about your expansion plans in Texas" will be "no". I don't think businesses being less transparent (or setting the price of the contract at greater than the value of open sourcing every part of their IP that isn't patentable or copyrightable) is a win.
I agree. I should have said "It makes corruption harder".
Forcing communication about illegal things to be done verbally is highly inconvenient for both Musk and Abbott. They have to take the time to connect which limits the other work they can be doing. They need a private time and to find a location to avoid someone overhearing their communications.
Not an impossibility, but definitely makes everything just a bit harder.
If Elon emails "call me", Abbott picks up the phone.
Doing illegal things over email is already risky from the point of view of not being able to redact when supplying it to an investigator.
The people actually inconvenienced by "public by default" are government departments trying to run a fair selection process involving detailed technical audits, or to provide support to companies that don't wish for their business plan to be public information. That's just a new hurdle that people proposing stuff which is completely legal have to cross when deciding whether to share any information with any public official ever.
Epstein's email footer throws the whole spaghetti at the wall—confidentiality, attorney-client privilege, securities regulations, and copyright law, too.
> "The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE"
> "Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by e-mail to jeevacation@gmail.com, and destroy this communication and all copies thereof, including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved"
> Abbott’s and Musk’s lawyers fought their release, arguing they would reveal trade secrets, potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges or confidential legal and policymaking discussions
Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't have used your government email account to have intimate and embarrassing exchanges? That thought come to mind, Mr. Abbott?
Is there any avenue to validate the claims of the governor’s office, that these things must be protected? Are there for example, firms that will look at the unredacted content as a third party with confidentiality agreements, to certify that it is correctly being redacted? Otherwise it feels like they could easily be hiding any number of unethical or outright criminal activities this way.
There actually is a legal process for just this sort of situation.
It's called an "In camera review". Assuming someone sues Abbott over this, then a judge can take the documents in question, look over them, and make a determination on whether or not Abbott's claims are true.
If there were a lawsuit it’s possible that the original communications could be obtained by court order. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened eventually.
The FBI and friends can also use their means of unlawful surveillance and leak the contents to politically aligned publishers.
My guess is that they discussed a lot of horse trading too candidly.
> Are there for example, firms that will look at the unredacted content as a third party with confidentiality agreements, to certify that it is correctly being redacted?
> potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges
What kinds of things could Musk and Abbott be discussing that could lead to an exchange of intimate messages? The only (non-jokey) thing I can think of would be discussions about the kinds of accommodations Abbott might need at SpaceX or Tesla events due to being paralyzed.
Elon's a large employer in Texas in industries with legal hurdles so it's unsurprising he ends up in email exchanges with senior politicians there, even more so since he's decided he's a political figure. He also has a... interesting line in quips, opinions and personal remarks which I imagine Abbott is happy to play along with when he's thinking more how much a friendlier relationship with Elon can boost his personal profile, state employment figures and bank balance and less about what other people reading it might think.
So yeah, there's probably some genuinely not-for-public consumption stuff about Tesla/SpaceX future business initiatives and a whole lot of racism and snarky comments about people that are supposed to be political allies...
Edit: wondering if the downvote brigade are supposed to be signalling that Elon doesn't have any legitimate reason to start conversations about his companies with Texas politicians or that private conversations with Elon would never end up segueing into something that might be embarrassing. Not sure which of those opinions is more ridiculous really...
Much of the point of transparency laws is to shine light on secret shenanigans between the wealthy and powerful, and the government. Communications that shouldn't be made public, like between crime victims and certain government officials should be treated with clearly delineated special handling. That should be rare. Not part of informal email exchanges. That's why various government bodies have closed sessions for certain meetings. Embarrassment after the fact isn't a good reason to redact. If Elon is unclear on the concept, maybe he shouldn't be doing government work.
re: your edit -
My downvote was to indicate that I reject your implication that there are legitimate reasons to keep his communications with government officials private. "Government" is, in most instances, replaceable with "Public". If you don't want your private business to be public knowledge, do not do business with the public. And if you do business with the public, expect that business to be public. There are mechanisms to protect "private" information that do not require government secrecy or redactions. Private businesses use them all the time. They are fallible, sure, but so is everything. More importantly, they are subject to subpoena and other legal remedies so they can be made public if necessary, but they are otherwise private (unlike email). And no, it doesn't matter to me what levels of harm can be done by the lack of secrecy; that's not a reason to be secret, that's a reason to not provide so much harm exposure. Government should be minimizing risk, not providing mechanisms that engender it. Besides, if my refusal to show ID to a cop with no RAS can still get me arrested, obviously the state understands the law as a "do the bad thing, sort it out later" kind of setup. So show us the emails and let's start working to fix the fallout.
Thanks for explaining the downvote.
But the position that because an institution works on behalf of the public, every communication it receives should be public seems naive. The entire publicly funded criminal justice service depends on secrecy to function, for example. Similarly, the public doesn't need to be know the budget and shortlist of possible locations for the next Gigafactory or how to build a Falcon 9 any more than it needs to know the identities of whistleblowers, and if you don't redact that information, you don't get people blowing whistles or sharing their expansion plans with governors or IP with NASA. Without the ability to deliver suitcases full of cash in response to a private conversation being inconvenienced in the slightest.
As you've already pointed out, we have such things as subpoenas already to deal with the actual criminal conduct. This is a better approach than "don't write anything you wouldn't share with everyone", not least because the latter actually normalizes every interaction with government officials being a request for an off-the-record in-person conversation.
> the public doesn't need to be know the budget and shortlist of possible locations for the next Gigafactory
Putting aside your other sensible comments, this one is true from Tesla's side, but false from the government side. I don't "need" to know what Tesla is doing, but I "need" to know what the government is doing. Let's say Tesla is weighing its options where to open the next factory, I want to know what governments are doing to attract (or not) their business.
I mean, the impact of that usually fairly public anyway, especially if it involves subsidies or legislative changes. Companies are free to whinge about legislators they consider obstructive too; Elon loves it!
I'll put it another way. Florida is quite happy to send state officials very publicly to small events explicitly focused in reeling in businesses, do a very public presentation about how they don't do socialist things like handouts but do offer them material support in building out their US base in Florida, and then hang around for networking. It's very much part of their jobs, and it's advertised and reported on, and in at least some cases open to the general public. So if I'd wanted to sidle up to Jared Purdue and explain why Florida's state investment fund should underwrite part of the cost of a space propulsion facility near Cape Canaveral, I was at a small event nowhere near Florida where I totally could have done that recently. But if I have no expectations that commercially sensitive data will be protected I'm almost certainly not going to consider following up by sharing financial projections and plans and evidence for his staff to review (and yet would be free to proceed if he can make things happen based purely on 5 minutes conversations or suitcases stuffed with cash) . I suspect Florida voters would prefer their DOT to be able to have that proper follow-up though (or would if the plant was likely to happen in the next 2 years and likely to end up in Florida...)
If the public wants more insight into what governments are doing to attract business you get that from budget transparency, formal review processes, publicised state support thresholds, independent anti corruption monitoring etc and of course PR about success stories, not by placing all written correspondence with businesses into the public domain, a measure which will severely limit their ability to [selectively] attract business. First thing I'd want the government to do to attract business is to respect the same confidences everyone else does, and that means where the new plant might be is non public information.
Likewise Elon can threaten or offer campaign contributions to a governor over the phone and probably does so, but if he wants to actually do the responsible thing and email lots and lots of arguments and evidence to try to persuade a governor that vetoing a bill is a bad thing, it's probably reasonable to assume that some of that is commercially sensitive (ironically if it's financial or technical details redacted from long emails is actually material to changing the governor's mind, it's probably because the case is better than the generic "yay Gigafactory, yay looser autonomous test regimes" arguments that get trotted out). Better to have a paper trail only suitably cleared people can see than nobody prepared to leave any paper trail at all.
And yeah, it's Elon, so there's probably other stuff that has nothing to do with his companies redacted too, but that's another issue entirely
Sorry it seems naive to you. But if someone is going into business with me (a part of the public), I expect to be able to see EVERYTHING that business has communicated with "the public" (which includes me). Like the other commenter said: I do need to know where the government plans to allow the next gigafactory or falcon 9 launchpad.
As far as whistleblowers and other such information, it's a nice deflection, but it's obviously irrelevant to this topic. I didn't claim anything about how the government should publicize everything, I made claims about what the government should share regarding business deals. Steelman, don't strawman.
And as far as your fear-mongering about everyone suddenly insisting on off-the-record conversations, A) it's a laughable premise; most people don't mind their business with the government being public on account of knowing what "public" means and B) anyone who tried to use off-the-record interaction as a means to circumvent public scrutiny would leave a trail of their behavior that could be relied upon in trial or legislative debate to evidence a law broken or a loophole to be made illegal. Simple as.
You can expect to see it all you like; you won't unless and until you can persuade enough other members of the public to vote for a platform of amending freedom of information legislation to stop redacting sensitive information (unless its a whistleblower identity apparently)
I'm sorry you find it "laughable" and "fear-mongering" that people will switch to off the record conversations. Perhaps you are not aware that government officials already spend most of their day talking to people in unrecorded conversations, with many of those conversations being with representatives of business.
As it is, companies will also happily follow those questions up with slide decks, projections, technical details and requests for information etc which helps substantiate their pitch or their case for funding or their objection to a bill (unless they're actually doing something dodgy, in which case creating a paper trail is counterproductive). They will not send this information if that is expected to be publicly disclosed because they don't want everybody knowing that they are emailing Texas officials about a Texan location before they've even decided if they actually want one or how much they're spending on widgets from which suppliers. Never mind other intriguing possibilities like NASA circulating all the technical documentation SpaceX has shared with them.
If you are truly convinced that 'most people don't mind their business with the government being public on account knowing what "public" means', I advise you to test this hypothesis by emailing some businesses asking them to share unredacted content of emails they have recently exchanged with government officials (a no-effort filter on .gov domains in their own mailbox is sufficient for this experiment). Let us know how many unredacted emails they share with you...
lol
It's hilarious that you seem to think that what you suggested is tantamount to what I suggested. You also don't seem to have actually worked with the government or requested any information via foia requests, based on your descriptions.
In any case, good luck on whatever you're trying to convince whoever your trying to convince of.
> a large employer ... with legal hurdles ... in email exchanges with senior politicians.
This is how corruption is defined.
No, the definition of corruption is offering illicit personal incentives
Pointing out that Tesla might be prepared to do x, y and z in the state in only the regulatory framework concerning p and q is compatible with their plans is plain old lobbying. Whether this is more good because it means lots of jobs for Texas or bad because the existing regulatory framework does an excellent job of protecting roads/labour/investors is exactly the sort of decision we give to elected representatives, for better and for worse. If the regulatory framework gets changed and then Tesla sets up a new plant, we probably see the governor issue press releases about it. Same goes for if local government chooses to subside the plant construction to "bring jobs to the state". That doesn't mean all the questions any politician or government agency actually trying to do the right thing should ask to establish the credibility of the proposal should be asking aren't legitimately trade secrets.
Personally, I define it as corruption when quid pro quo occurs, nice gifts, expensive dinners, etc.
In government work, in my field specifically, it's the inappropriate transfer of money (gifts, deals, dinners) that's reportable.
The limit for reporting in my field (for gifts) is 10 dollars.
Can't demonstrate quid-pro-quo of the details are redacted.
Negotiating is difficult if you show your hand. It is arguably beneficial to both the state and Elon that the e-mails stay redacted. I agree it is unfortunate though.
Sensitive negotiations like those should be handled by low-level bureaucrats with supervision, not by the damned Governor. Again, negotiating directly with a state governor is obviously corrupt no matter what the contents. This would have been instantly clear to any American back when we were an advanced nation.
If the result of the negotiations are in good faith and beneficial for his constituents, then it is not corruption. Of course, that's open to interpretation.
Corruption is usually when there is personal benefit to the politician themselves.
Regarding your edit, I upvoted your comment at first, but instantly downvoted once I got to the edit. Whining about imaginary interet points is not a constructive discussion worth having and in my subjective opinion does not belong on HN.
Which is why I downvoted your off-topic diatribe :)
Fair, not whining about downvotes is in the guidelines. I would point out I got a constructive response out of it though.
Mostly I was just amused by rapid fall before I got any replies and the possibility I might have managed to offend both ardently pro and anti Elon people with a relatively anodyne post :)
> segueing into something that might be embarrassing
Like his support of racist organizations in Europe? Or hiding information about failures of self-driving automobiles? Or unexpected layoffs? There's probably a lot more, involving SpaceX, etc.
Honestly, that first one alone merits a lot of hairy eyeballing, but I despise racists and hate that my home state is associated with them.
> industries with legal hurdles so it's unsurprising he ends up in email exchanges with senior politicians
Why are politicians involved with legal issues? Is this correct?
Not legal issues in the sense issues contested in court, rather they mean to say the combination of regulations and compliance to state laws that any business particularly a large one with significant physical footprint[1] would need to comply with. Politicians are in the business of passing and enforcing those laws or giving exceptions to compliance.
[1] A lot of less permits would be needed for 10,000 member software company compared to a rocket launch provider or a manufacturing unit.
> Politicians are in the business of passing and enforcing those laws or giving exceptions to compliance.
I think this is what's confusing me - I'd expect politicians to pass laws, but enforcement might be the job of police, tax authorities, workplace safety inspectors, etc.
And giving politicians say over who laws apply to sounds like a fast track to corruption.
It is a fast track to corruption without a strong independent judiciary yes.
politicians have a dual role they are the legislative authority and also are the executive (when in power) . They don’t do those roles concurrently but the same people switch between those two.
The actual execution happens by police lawyers or tax authorities as you say, but the direction and leadership is set by the politicians. When to prosecute, whom to and what punishment to ask for and so on.
In the US system there is additional complexity as what are nominally administrative positions like judge, sheriff etc also elected. So by definition those people also have to be politicians.
Because politicians make laws, and those affect the "legal hurdles" that companies need to deal with.
Who do you imagine writes laws?
Policy wonks?
What I'm reading is that if you want to preserve confidentiality, you can mix trade secrets into your communication. Sounds like an easy thing with no downside.
Yes, unfortunately... the right outcome here should be corporate lawyers saying "companies should NOT add trade secrets when talking to the government because it will leak", but instead the public can't know what the government is doing because it might hurt a company. US 101, doing what's best for business over its people.
sigh and it should be the opposite. Divulging trade secrets into records that can be FOIA-ed should be tantamount to publicly releasing them.
I mean, without the trade secret exemption that's basically any written exchange with government....
I'm not seeing much to be gained by making it impossible for governments to do due diligence with many suppliers because they'd rather turn down the contract than broadcast such information to their competitors (not sure it'd jive particularly well with public company control over what is and isn't public information either)...
The upside is it stops corruption.
The fact is, spacex does not have any "trade secrets" that they should be dropping into communication with a government official when speaking about policy or a future contract.
It's not like Musk would be dropping in things like vendors or material composition when talking to Abbott.
The upside of working with the government for a contract is that usually means a lot of money. The price should be full transparency as that's our tax dollars. Secret government communications should pretty much always be seen as highly suspicious.
I mean, it doesn't 'stop corruption' because you can arrange to send money to secret bank accounts verbally, which is not subject to FOIA. Anyone considering emailing about something actually illegal needs to worry about subpoenas far more than freedom of information anyway.
But it does mean that the answer to "can you disclose more about the functioning of technology X" or "can you tell us more about your expansion plans in Texas" will be "no". I don't think businesses being less transparent (or setting the price of the contract at greater than the value of open sourcing every part of their IP that isn't patentable or copyrightable) is a win.
I agree. I should have said "It makes corruption harder".
Forcing communication about illegal things to be done verbally is highly inconvenient for both Musk and Abbott. They have to take the time to connect which limits the other work they can be doing. They need a private time and to find a location to avoid someone overhearing their communications.
Not an impossibility, but definitely makes everything just a bit harder.
If Elon emails "call me", Abbott picks up the phone.
Doing illegal things over email is already risky from the point of view of not being able to redact when supplying it to an investigator.
The people actually inconvenienced by "public by default" are government departments trying to run a fair selection process involving detailed technical audits, or to provide support to companies that don't wish for their business plan to be public information. That's just a new hurdle that people proposing stuff which is completely legal have to cross when deciding whether to share any information with any public official ever.
Epstein's email footer throws the whole spaghetti at the wall—confidentiality, attorney-client privilege, securities regulations, and copyright law, too.
> "The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE"
> "Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by e-mail to jeevacation@gmail.com, and destroy this communication and all copies thereof, including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved"
The prisoners are absolutely running the prison now
> Abbott’s and Musk’s lawyers fought their release, arguing they would reveal trade secrets, potentially “intimate and embarrassing” exchanges or confidential legal and policymaking discussions
Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn't have used your government email account to have intimate and embarrassing exchanges? That thought come to mind, Mr. Abbott?
Yep, fuck that- government email = public record. Redaction should require a damn higher bar than "oh that's too intimate/embarrassing".
Intimate and embarrassing, Musk, and trade secrets makes me think it’s about sex dolls.
Might say more about you...
I'm sure it would be embarrassing, if the public discovered just how much the state of texas, and governor abbot, were kissing elon's ass...
Is there any avenue to validate the claims of the governor’s office, that these things must be protected? Are there for example, firms that will look at the unredacted content as a third party with confidentiality agreements, to certify that it is correctly being redacted? Otherwise it feels like they could easily be hiding any number of unethical or outright criminal activities this way.
There actually is a legal process for just this sort of situation.
It's called an "In camera review". Assuming someone sues Abbott over this, then a judge can take the documents in question, look over them, and make a determination on whether or not Abbott's claims are true.
That ruling can be appealed to higher courts.
If there were a lawsuit it’s possible that the original communications could be obtained by court order. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened eventually.
The FBI and friends can also use their means of unlawful surveillance and leak the contents to politically aligned publishers.
My guess is that they discussed a lot of horse trading too candidly.
> Are there for example, firms that will look at the unredacted content as a third party with confidentiality agreements, to certify that it is correctly being redacted?
No. But there are investigative reporters.
Not entirely accurate.
The government uses "special masters" or "taint teams" if there's a scenario like this, at times. One was involved in the Trump Mar-a-Lago case.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/litigation/resources/news...