Open Meeting Laws, Offensive Emails, and Email Threats
Top List of Reported Email Incidents at Educational Institutions
CONCORD, MA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- June 05, 2007 -- Reported email incidents and required disclosures at public schools across the nation have increased dramatically in the past 60 days, according to InBoxer, Inc., a leading provider of email archiving and electronic discovery systems. The company informally surveyed newspaper accounts of email-related events involving public school faculty, staff, and students. Three types of events dominated the coverage: (1) requests for emails under state open meeting laws, (2) offensive emails or those with sexual content, and (3) threats emailed to schools. Examples found during the survey include:
- Emails between School Board members made the news in Palo Alto, CA, Nashua, NH, Alamogordo, NM, and Pine Bush, NY. Because of various state open meeting laws, many school attorneys believe that an email exchange involving a quorum of school board members is subject to public disclosure. For example, in Nashua, NH, the attorney released 198 pages of email in response to a newspaper request.
- Offensive emails or emails with sexual content involving school computers were in the news in Fresno, CA, Cape Coral, FL, Bainbridge, IN, and Edmonds County, WA. In Fresno, a school employee was terminated after reportedly sending a racist email entitled "Proud to be White."
- Threatening emails locked down schools or caused students to be removed in Batavia, IL, Canon City, CO, Douglas County, NV, Canton, OH, and Appleton, WI. In Canton, OH, roughly 1,000 students were evacuated after a secretary received an email bomb threat.
"These examples indicate that public schools may have more to worry about than most businesses. They not only have the requirement to archive email to protect themselves, they also have the added burdens of public disclosure rules and the need to protect students from very real risks," said Roger Matus, chief executive officer of InBoxer, Inc. "What would have happened if the secretary in Canton had not been at her desk? Fortunately, there are systems today that can help schools be more responsive than ever before."
"School districts are always vulnerable to legal action and email abuse. We believe it is critical to document and save all communications that relate to potential actions so that we can adequately defend ourselves. We also need to be ready for email incidents as soon as they take place," said Bob Cornacchioli, Director of Instructional Technology and Media Services for the Shrewsbury, Massachusetts Public Schools.
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About InBoxer
InBoxer, Inc. (http://www.inboxer.com) helps organizations with email archiving, electronic discovery, and content monitoring with real-time compliance notifications. Its products assist with meeting the requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The company's award-winning InBoxer Anti-Spam Filter and the InBoxer Anti-Risk Appliance use industry-leading sophisticated language technologies and advanced techniques to analyze entire messages, not just key words and phrases, to achieve high accuracy. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Concord, Mass., InBoxer's customers across six continents include Fortune 100 companies, state and local governments, health care institutions, small businesses, and consumers. The CEO's Blog "Death By Email" may be found at http://www.deathbyemail.com.
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