Constitutional Law

Wash. high court: E-mail metadata is public record

By By The Associated Press

SEATTLE ? Metadata associated with electronic documents ? such as the ?to? and ?from? fields in e-mails ? is a public record subject to disclosure, Washington?s Supreme Court ruled yesterday.

The 5-4 ruling concerned a Shoreline resident?s request under the Public Records Act for an e-mail that had been sent to the city?s deputy mayor. The resident received a copy of the e-mail without the metadata and subsequently filed a request for the information.

?Metadata may contain information that relates to the conduct of government and is important for the public to know,? Justice Susan Owens wrote in O?Neill v. City Of Shoreline. ?It could conceivably include information about whether a document was altered, what time a document was created, or who sent a document to whom.?

Owens wrote that only one other state high court ? Arizona?s ? had considered the question, and it too held that that the information is subject to disclosure.

The issue has arisen elsewhere as courts grapple with the intersection of technology and disclosure laws. An appeals court in New York ruled early this year that an agency should have released certain metadata associated with photographs pursuant to a disclosure request.

Metadata is generally defined as data about data, and it can include information such as the address fields in e-mails, file types, file creation and modification dates, and the author of such modifications. It can be used to authenticate e-mails and other electronic documents.

That type of information became important to Shoreline resident Beth O?Neill in 2006, when the city?s deputy mayor, Maggie Fimia, claimed at a public meeting that O?Neill had sent an e-mail accusing the City Council of improper conduct in a zoning dispute. O?Neill had not written or forwarded any such e-mail, and she wanted to know why Fimia was claiming she had.

It turned out that O?Neill?s name was mentioned in an e-mail Fimia received from someone else. After the meeting, Fimia forwarded the e-mail from her city account to her personal account ? stripping out the address fields in an effort to protect the identity of the person who sent her the e-mail.

That copy of the e-mail was eventually turned over to O?Neill, who wasn?t satisfied. She asked for the original e-mail with its metadata. Fimia searched her e-mail folders and concluded she must have accidentally deleted it.

The high court ruled it was improper for Fimia to delete the original e-mail, especially since it was subject to a public-disclosure request. Because Fimia used her personal computer for official business, the justices sent the case back to a lower court with instructions for the city to search the hard drive of Fimia?s home computer in an attempt to find the metadata.

The four-justice minority took issue with that. Under the law, a public record is defined as a record held by a government agency ? not one that exists on a city employee?s home computer, Justice Gerry Alexander wrote.

If the communication had been a written letter, rather than an e-mail, Alexander said he doubted the court would require the city to search Fimia?s home recycling bin in an effort to find an envelope that might verify where and when the letter was mailed.

O?Neill?s attorney, Michele Earl-Hubbard, said she was pleased the court ruled that metadata is subject to public disclosure, but disappointed that the court sent the case back without finding an outright violation of the Public Records Act which would require Shoreline to pay O?Neill penalties for improperly withholding records.

?Our Supreme Court here says yes, there are electronic parts of records that may have value, and an agency may not destroy them,? Earl-Hubbard said. ?That?s a big part of the accountability picture.?

Shoreline City Attorney Richard Sievers did not return a message seeking comment in time for this story.

Full post as published by First Amendment Center on October 07, 2010 (boomark / email).