Union: District Officials Blocked Emails to School Board Members

[Omaha Steve]

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2009/10/broward_school_board_emails_intercepted.php

By Bob Norman Thu., Oct. 15 2009 @ 8:25AMThe Broward Teachers Union has sent a cease and desist letter to Superintendent James Notter and School Board Chairwoman Maureen Dinnen demanding that they stop intercepting emails from teachers and other school employees to School Board members.

​From a news release:


BTU President Pat Santeramo said union leaders discovered by chance district officials intercepted and blocked the employee's e-mails to school board members when School Board Member Stephanie Kraft "unwittingly" alerted them. Union leaders had sent an e-mail message to the labor organization's 14,000 members on March 25, 2009 thanking them for their support during last year's long contract negotiations with the district and, over the course of the 2008-2009 school year, for having sent hundreds of thousands of e-mails to school board members.

Ironically, Kraft did receive a copy of the union's e-mail message to its members and fired back a response to BTU President Pat Santeramo just hours later at 10:27 a.m. on the same day, writing, "PS, board members did not receive any emails, let alone hundreds of thousands." It appeared she and the other school board members were unaware their constituents' e-mail messages were being intercepted.

Her e-mail launched a union investigation that amounted to reviewing thousands of e-mail messages, which are all public documents, sent and received by school board members and district officials between March 23 to April 17, 2009. It was determined district officials intercepted the employees' e-mail messages to school board members on March 22 and 23, April 12 and August 26. Union leaders spent several months researching and consulting with national legal experts with the American Federation of Teachers in Washington D.C. and the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco and learned the district officials were likely violating the employees' constitutional rights.

... The union's lawyers, nationally recognized labor attorney Mark Richard in Miami and General Counsel David Strom of the American Federation of Teachers in Washington D.C., found district officials were likely in violation of state and federal wiretapping statutes. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 amended the Federal Wiretapping Act. It expanded the existing provisions regarding the interception of wireless communication to specifically cover the interception of email communications.

OK, it's definitely suspect for the district to block emails from employees to School Board members, and this deserves a full independent investigation by the School Board to determine who blocked the emails, how and why it was done, and whether laws were violated in so doing.

FULL story at link.