My friend John Beimler decided to take advantage of the Public Records law and get a copy of all the email addresses from all the email lists the Town of Cary maintains. The following email went out to all the folks on those lists:
We want to let you know that a person has requested a copy of the e-mail addresses from all Town of Cary electronic mailing lists, and as a subscriber, your email address is included in this database. Therefore, you may begin receiving emails from others outside of our control. As a reminder, the database is a public record under North Carolina law (see our Public Records Policy and our Privacy Statement).
The email lists are being requested by:
John Beimler
1206 Castalia Dr
Cary, NC 27513
919-926-7264
jbeimler at radiomind dot com.
As always, we apologize for any inconvenience this may bring and hope that the actions of others will not result in your deciding to unsubscribe from the Town’s e-mail service. Please contact us if you have questions or need further information.
Susan Moran, APR
Town of Cary Public Information Officer
susan dot moran at townofcary dot org
So, why did John do it? I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him. But what’s most surprising to me is that this is the first time I’ve heard of this happening. News media request emails from municipalities from time to time and if you’re one of the subjects of their email searches, you’ll get an email similar to the one above letting you know that you’ve been searched. Aside from that there’s nothing you can do about it – nor should you – as a public record is a public record. If you’re doing business with the city others have a right to know what you’re doing.
Even outside of John’s request, it surprises me that there are still some folks who think their email address is privileged information, when in actuality every email address is known to someone out there on the Internet. Like the old saw about the only secure computer is the one that’s unplugged, the only private email address is the one that’s never been set up.
Update: John says via Twitter that he requested the info because it’s public record:
@mdhillison Because it is a public record and an interesting place to start on finding out information about people interested in Cary 🙂
John also posted this on Facebook this morning:
John Beimler I need to mess with the Town more often, I’ve heard from more people and more of my friends today than I normally do in months! Hi, everyone, no I don’t plan to be a jerk, but public information requests sure are fun!
Update 26 Feb: The story has been covered by WTVD
So, John Beimler doesn’t “plan to be a jerk”. Too late.
By “messing with the Town” to obtain people’s e-mail addresses for “fun”, he has already shown his true character. How do we know he will not decide that it will be even more “fun” to sell a list of valid e-mail addresses to spammers? Trust him, he says? Yeah, right.