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. E-mails to City of Bozeman about pri­vacy fiasco not yet avail­able to the public
4. Details of Bozeman’s con­tract with hir­ing prac­tice investigator
5. Montana ACLU con­grat­u­lates Bozeman for rescind­ing pass­word policy