Forget Apple and the FBI for a moment — maybe the public needs a back door into San Francisco officials’ cell phones. Several of the city’s elected leaders have just been outed for using a messaging app that features encrypted chats and messages that self-destruct.
Using the Telegram app for public business — as members of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors have reportedly been doing — can enable officials to operate blissfully free of oversight by the public and media. Accountability? That’s for the little people.
“A San Francisco government staff member said they were encouraged to use the app by colleagues in City Hall who described it as a way to skirt the city’s public records laws,” reported news website The Information. “A view of the app showed several supervisors and their aides had been ‘active.’ In many cases, the app was used daily or hourly by those officials, aides and advisers.”
Work-related emails and text communications by government officials, under the state’s Public Records Act, are considered public records. All state and local government agencies are legally compelled to abide by the Act.
It appears that the Telegram-using supes have found a gray area in the public records law. According to The Information, a guide from San Francisco’s city attorney advises officials to consider work-related communications on their personal devices to be public, but notes that the courts haven’t made it clear whether such communications are public.
Use of the app puts the San Francisco leaders into interesting company: Telegram had been quite popular with the terrorist group ISIS, which had been using it to spread propaganda and recruit fighters. In the wake of the Paris terror attacks in November, Berlin-based Telegram tweeted that it had blocked 78 “ISIS-related” channels on the app.
San Francisco officials love Telegram because it “self destructs,” April Veneracion, a top aide to Supervisor Jane Kim, told The Information. Veneracion reportedly said she didn’t know if using the app broke public records laws, and told the website in a message, “I should find out though!”
Telegram claimed last month it had 100 million monthly active users, with 350,000 new users joining every day, and that it delivered 15 billion messages daily.
Whether officials in other Bay Area cities are hiding behind the app is unclear, because it may be used on personal cell phones.
“I’ve not found anyone who is even aware of Telegram or is using the app in any Council or other City offices,” said San Jose spokesperson David Vossbrink. “That doesn’t mean it’s not in use, but there’s no practical way of finding out who might have downloaded the app on their personal devices or how they might be using it.” Spokespersons for other cities provided similar comments.
Photo: The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. (Karl Mondon/Staff)
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