I sent an email to the Wisconsin Assistant Attorney Generals office asking him his opinion on something I’d encountered while working as a police officer. I sent the email using my personal email account, on my home computer, on my own personal time. I sent the email to the AAG office, not his personal email address.
The AAG responded and answered my question.
While the Attorney General is elected, the assistant Attorney General is not. I believe though, that emails from his office are still considered public record, but I can’t find the statute that says this.
My question is, can I legally reveal to the world what he said in his email?
There was a disclaimer saying that it was solely the opinion of the Assistant Attorney General, and did not constitute an opinion of the Wisconsin Attorney General nor the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
But there was no language that spoke of confidentialty.
Keep in mind, I would love to get the opinion of the actual AG, but that can’t be done via an email. Only certain individuals, such as a state legislator, can request such an opinion.
But I find the AAG’s comments on my question interesting and I have some people I wish to share them with.
Of course, I had assumed that the OP’s was questioning his right to reveal the nature of the communication, as if there was some automatic principal of confidentiality at issue.
I figured. We’ve discussed e-mail disclaimers and disclosure before here. I agree there is no automatic principle of confidentiality. If the e-mail contained private information about the sender or some third party, the question might be a bit more complicated. Otherwise, disclaimer or not, there’s little issue with disclosing it.
Not wishing to hijack pkbites question but how does this not-republishing of letters fit with email and the recent rulings rejecting the RIAA’s “making available” = copyright violation claims?
With letters the matter is clear: there is a single, physical copy of the letter. Photocopying it, or printing it in a book is clearly copying, and in breach of the original authors copyright.
Email is far less clear. For one, there are already an unknown number of temporary copies of the email as part of the process of sending and receiving it; it is rather more like a telegraph message that passed through many operators… but that aside…
What is the situation if I store the email sent to me in text format on my machine that is also set up as a file server? In theory I could give anyone a link to the file, allowing them to view the (notionally) same email that I received. Have I breached copyright? Have I only “made available”, and thus side-stepped the breach? Is this the same as “showing people” the letter in the quote above?
You can. Attorney-client confidentiality means the attorney cannot, and cannot be forced to, reveal the contents of a representation-related communication with a client without the client’s permission.
An additional thought / question, that goes back to the OP: if I (or pkbites) can “show” someone a letter does it have to be in person? Can I read the contents to someone over a phone? (Or is that an unlicensed performance of the material?) What if I’m a video-phone or web-cam? Can I hold the letter up to the camera to show someone the original letter or have I just breached copyright by transmitting it?
Followup: Since **pkbites **question has been answered and my questions are more connected to the mailbag article that **Gfactor **linked I’ve opened a thread there for these questions about copyright and email instead.
