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Thursday, June 12, 2008

Florida Judge: Go Get The E-Mail From Home...

In an extraordinary move, a circuit judge ordered three Venice City Council members to let a computer expert retrieve government-business e-mail from their home computers.

Judge Robert Bennett did not specify how Mayor Ed Martin and council members John Moore and John Simmonds must comply with his ruling, which came at the conclusion of an unusual one-and-a-half-hour emergency hearing involving Venice's top public officials.

But he required the three council members to provide access to their private computers to ensure preservation of records that are at the heart of a suit over alleged violations of Florida's open government laws.

Council members Sue Lang, Vicki Noren, Rick Tacy and Ernie Zavodnyik testified that they had turned over e-mail requested as part of the lawsuit and had not deleted any city government e-mail from their home computers. Bennett did not order them to provide access to their private computers.

More here.

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