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Category Archives: Ethics of managing current records

As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. – Karl Marx

On the 5th of November, 2017 the Toronto Star published an article titled “Massive leak pulls back the curtain on offshore tax havens – again.” The article is a quick run down of the latest leak of records from a law firm, Appleby, focused on facilitating “offshore activities that keep billions of tax income beyond the reach of governments around the world.” This leak has been named the Paradise Papers which is made up of 13.4 million records, 1.4 terabytes of “detailed corporate records, including emails, memos, spreadsheets, correspondence, and meeting minutes.”

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The Trump administration has become infamous for their blatant disregard for presidential decorum. However, they are particularly bad at proper records management. In her article, “Are Jared and Ivanka erasing history,” Sarada Peri discusses Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s use of private email servers for official White House business. These practices violate the Presidential Records Act, which was created to protect all presidential records. The article focuses on the parallels between Nixon’s misuse of presidential records to that of the current administration. Peri argues “Presidential recordkeeping is as much about remembering our leaders’ missteps as it is about memorializing their triumphs.” She highlights the importance of the Presidential Records Act through discussing the act’s origins, the issues with modern technology, and the role of presidential recordkeeping.

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Want to know a secret? Records retention schedules don’t really matter to our elected leaders.

In the fall of 2017, a series of articles by Karen Howlett appeared in the Globe and Mail detailing the trial of two former high-level staff members in the Ontario Premier’s office. David Livingston, the Chief of Staff for former Premier Dalton McGuinty, and Laura Miller, his Deputy, were charged with criminal breach of trust, mischief, and unauthorized use of a computer. The case concerned the alleged destruction of e-mails and other government records in 2013, relating to the cancellation of two gas-fired power plant projects in 2011.

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