BE BREITBART: DoIT Right To Know Request : Outbound Internet traffic summarizations – Update 2

Well, I would say that the response we had when Ms. Gretchen Hamel (Administrator!) emailed Letter arrived could be described amongst us “Techi Groksters” was a “really, you expect us to believe that this is difficult?”.  After all, amongst us, we have a handful of degrees and upwards of 75 years of technical experience and several of us are the corporate experts in our areas for our respective companies. So, we’re asking the main technical guy of the State of NH – is this really that difficult?

Good evening, Commissioner,

Upon reading the rather sparse Letter from Ms. Hamel (April 27) concerning our Right To Know request concerning the website traffic Summarizations, we became technically puzzled.  It is our hope that you would be able to address our concern and lack of understanding of the difficulty implied by Ms. Hamel’s Letter.

Our response to that is below, as well attached to this Letter in both WORD and OpenOffice formats.

Regard

– Skip

Skip Murphy for Steve Mac Donald and Ed Naile.

*****

April 30, 2012

To:

Stanley “Bill” Rogers, Commissioner, Department of Information Technology / CIO, State of New Hampshire

Re: April 30, 2012 Request for Records Pursuant to RSA 91-A – delay of response.

Dear Commissioner Rogers,

We are in receipt of the letter by Ms. Gretchen Hamel, Administrator of April 27, informing us that it was impossible to transfer the Internet URL Summarization records that we, as citizens of the State of New Hampshire, believe that we should have access to, especially under the aegis of RSA 91-A (the State’s Right To Know (“RTK”) law). From a technical standpoint, we are extremely puzzled over two issues:

  • First, we included DES Commissioner Burack as a courtesy on this RTK simply as our first RTK dealt specifically with one of his employees abusing the Internet access afforded by your network and we requested those Summarization records specifically in that case. We accept the fact that in a case pertaining a single employee, we understand that these could be labeled as “responsive but exempt”.
  • Secondly, our latest RTK concerned these Summarization records are in toto, thus not tied to any given employee or subgroup of employees and therefore, would fall into that category of “responsive but non-exempt”.

But more to point of fact, we are puzzled as to the “additional time is needed” in delivering records that taxpayer monies have already paid for and whose existence has already been confirmed by the State.. As a technical person (although we do recognize that you are, by dint of your title, a Political Appointee, and thus mired in politics which most engineers tolerate but abhor), you must realize that we understand how such records are obtainable in short order.

Read more

BE BREITBART: DoIT Right To Know Request : Outbound Internet traffic summarizations – Update 2

I almost forgot!  I got a call – last Friday.  Well, that’s what TMEW told me when I returned from an appointment on Friday afternoon.  It seems that NH DES Commish Tom Burack called to invite me / GraniteGrok to a meeting on this coming Friday at 3pm to meet with him and the Dept … Read more

BE BREITBART: DoIT Right To Know Request : Outbound Internet traffic summarizations

We are a persistent bunch here at the ‘Grok:

Good morning,

We, as taxpayers in the State of NH, are requesting certain electronic records concerning the outbound Internet traffic emanating from the State of NH’s computer network.

Please review the following RSA 91-A request; we stand ready to work with you concerning this issue.  Please find a copy of the request below as well as two attachments (the same request, in Microsoft WORD and OpenOffice formats)

Kindest Regards,

-Skip

David “Skip” Murphy for myself, Steve Mac Donald, and Ed Naile (citizens of the State of New Hampshire)

**********

Right to Know Request
as per
RSA 91-A
April 20, 2012

To:     Stanley “Bill” Rodgers, Commissioner and CIO, Department of Information Technology, State of NH
Thomas S. Burack, C, Department of Environmental Services, State of NH

In light of the final response of April 19th concerning our first Right To Know request (re: political postings by State Employee Richard de Seve during regularly scheduled work hours contra to the policies of both the Department of Environmental Services (“DES”) and the Department of Information Technology (“DoIT”) filed on March 11, 2012), we are making the following RSA 91-A request.

As noted in that final response:

When a user enters a URL or IP address for a particular web page, the outbound request passes through the state’s internal network until it reaches the internal firewall. There, the request is routed through DOIT’s web filtering software. That software categorizes web sites based on historical content. Agencies establish filter policies that determine which categories are accessible or blocked. Based on a user’s login information, the software is able to associate a user with his or her IP address and based on the policy assigned to that user, determines whether the requested page is allowed or blocked. If allowed, the software permits the requested web page to be sent from the requested server to the user for viewing. The date, time, and destination of the outgoing request, as well as all IP information sent to the user from the destination web page, are recorded by the web filtering software. The actual content of what was either sent or received is not recorded.

We hereby request,

Read more

Share to...