Notes from a brief talk with Greg Sullivan

When I went to Bozeman's city hall to collect my packet of FOI-requested documents, I spoke with City Attorney Greg Sullivan for a few minutes and made some notes. Most of what he said was explanatory, telling me why a pair of e-mails in my document packet had redacted sections and recounting the fiasco from the city's point of view.

Near the end of the talk, though, Sullivan said a few interesting things. Notably, he said that as angry e-mails began to flood the city's inboxes, he learned a powerful lesson about the way the modern Internet works.

"It was fast," he said. "What it taught me, certainly, is that the Internet is an incredible thing. If people all over the world can understand what's going on in Bozeman within an hour, minutes, they were reading it. It's an incredibly powerful ting. I kind of knew that before, but not in the way I know it now."

Related posts:

1. Update on request for documents from Bozeman
2. E-mails to the city of Bozeman
3. Details of Bozeman’s contract with hiring practice investigator
4. E-mails to City of Bozeman about privacy fiasco not yet available to the public
5. Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic article