We’ve already posted a couple of times on the State employee Rickard “Dick” de Seve’ use of taxpayer paid time and computer services (Is A NH Public Employee Using The Internet to Sell his Political Agenda On Your Time?, So, what does the State of NH say about “Using The Internet to Sell his Political Agenda On Your Time?” and An Apology to the NH SEA/SEIU) on the subject, wondering about how a NH State employee (and former lawyer and present chapter VP in the NH SEIU [the Service Employees International Union, the union that represents most union employees employed by the State of NH]), could be posting so many political comments for such a long time on the NH taxpayer dime.
So last week we filed a NH RTK or Right To Know request, identified in most other parts of the country as an FOIA or Freedom of Information Act request. (Grokster Steve and I have been joined by Ed Naile of CNHT -the Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers in the effort.) We asked for not only HR records (to establish when he was supposed to be working and if he had indeed read and signed the department internet use policy, and/or any warnings that were constructed based on his use of NH State Property. But that’s not all we asked for…
The twist with this particular Right To Know request is that…being the nerds we are, we’ve also asked for a lot of Internet traffic information. You see, every time someone’s computer “talks” to another resource on either the State network or on the Internet, a bunch of “packets” are sent that identify the sending machine, time stamps, data, and the destination system. Further, on every network that connects to the outside world, there is a “gateway” router that figures out which packets should head for an external site (or not), and what its purpose is (e.g., email, video, audio, text, pictures, et al); and there certainly can be a history that can log that data for later retrieval and analysis (often times for network security and policing of usage). I am imagining that as we decode the packets six ways to Sunday, (we have hardware, the software, and the experienced skill sets to actually know what to do with this data), there may well be quite a bit of useful information. No, we are not all that interested in legitimate traffic in performance of someone’s job – but we are in the stuff that isn’t.
We have already received the official notification from the Department of Environmental Services indicating that they have received our RTK request, and are now working with Human Resources and the Department of Information Technology to gather up the information we’ve asked for. And yes, we have been informed that they have never received an RTK like this before – either in the intent, nor in the information requested. We do try to keep things interesting!
And for the sake of full transparency, we included a bunch of folks in the NH House that we know to be computer savvy as that is their professions. They understand the request and they understand the why’s of the request contents as well.
Right to Know Request
as per
RSA 91-A
March 11, 2012
To:
Stanley “Bill” Rodgers, Commissioner and CIO, Department of Information Technology, State of New Hampshire
Harry T, Stewart, Director, Department of Environmental Security, State of New Hampshire
Susan Carlson, Chief Operations Officer, Human Resources, Department of Environmental Security, State of New Hampshire
In light of several years (going back to 2005) of emails and posts generated during standard working hours by Mr. Richard de Seve in the employee of State of New Hampshire Department of Environmental Security (under various email names to many statewide publications, web sites and blog addresses) we are requesting, under RSA 91-A, a number of records to substantiate this activity.
Given that there are very specific restrictions that the official NH IT Policy (“Department of Information Technology Computer Use”, http://www.nh.gov/doit/internet/org/cio/hr/forms/documents/ComputerUsePolicy.pdf) places on NH State employees, the requested records will either substantiate (or clear) our misgivings concerning Mr. de Seve’s use or misuse of taxpayer supplied computer equipment and/or services during his work hours by specifically measuring that behavior according to the IT Department’s own metrics.
We are requesting the following records which may or may not be in electronic form – we are willing to accept any paper based forms in these matters:
- Any notifications by the IT Department to any and all of Mr. de Seve’s supervisors or managers concerning infractions or misuse of the State’s computer network, Internet gateways, equipment, and associated IT Department policy items.
- Any notifications by Mr. de Seve’s managers or supervisors to Mr. de Seve concerning these infractions concerning the misuse of the State’s computer network, Internet gateways, equipment, and associated IT Department policy items as identified by the IT Department (according to its own policies).
- Copies of the Mr. de Seve’s signed copies of the IT Department’s Computer Use policy that he signs at his annual review, showing that he has read, understands, and agrees to abide by.
Further, we are also requesting the payroll hours of Mr. de Seve as well for the time frame January 1, 2005 to March 12, 2012 and the signed copies of the “Department of Information Technology Computer Use document that is updated yearly and signed by Mr. de Seve at each of his annual reviews.
The electronic records that this Right To Know request is seeking (given the time frame enumerated above) are the following:
- Any and all of Mr. de Seve’s emails that were outbound of the NH State’s domain and whose destination were other than for another NH State employee.
- Electronic copies of his “daily work hour” payroll hours if hourly, copies of any documents showing his status as a Salaried employee if that category is correct.
- Any and all electronic records that show outbound traffic to any and all non-State related websites from the IT departments proxy servers, outbound routers / designated Internet gateways emanating from the use of Mr. de Seve’s computer usage (based on his Authorized User ID / assigned computer). At a minimum, we are looking for such packet level records that will contain:
- Mr. de Seve’s ID (or that can be traced back to such)
- Mr. de Seve’s assigned IP address for his assigned computer(s). If, however, that address (or set of addresses) are dynamically assigned, a key / foreign key that can be used to link such records together along with the logs that show the connection between the MAC address(es) of Mr. de Seve’s computers by the designated DHCP server(s).
- The designation IP address of such traffic generated by Mr. de Seve
- Time Stamps for each record so as to determine “length of time onsite”. For this item, summary records of site visits with such information will be acceptable.
- Any and all electronic records from the IT Department flagging, as the policy states, “to be inappropriate or excessive”.
- Any and all other records that might be of interest
Please be advised that the following request is made in regards to any electronic records retained by the State of NH, in digital file format used by the State of New Hampshire, or any subdivision thereof, according to the DoIT Computer policy, Chapter 4.3, or any other controlling statute or administrative rule, by state employee Richard de Seve in the Department of Environmental Services.
As this request can be complied with in any number of ways it would be beneficial to all if we could have a contact person who will be in charge of complying with RSA 91-A in the moist efficient manner regarding Mr. de Seve. We wish no exempt materials.
In as much as this may be a request for what are clearly public records stored a manner other than most standard 91-A requests, we waive the normal time frame for compliance once we receive a reply from any entity with the authority to provide us with the above mentioned records or a written reason why these public documents are exempt from the Right to Know Law.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation
Signed____________________________________
David “Skip” Murphy
Steve Mac Donald
Ed Naile
c.c Speaker of the House, the Hon. William O’Brien
c.c Majority Leader, NH House of Representatives, D.J. Bettencourt
c.c NH State Senator Jim Forsythe (member, NH IT Council)
c.c NH State Representative Seth Cohn
c.c NH State Representative Mark Warden
c.c NH State Representative J.R. Hoell
c.c Coalition of New Hampshire Taxpayers
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So, for Liberty & Freedom, for Openness and Transparency – Be Breitbart!
