Archiving Twitter as a Public Record
This article courtesy of @markbriggs is just what we needed right now: a warning and potential solutions. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_ways_to_archive_your_tweets...
In Washington state, your city can be fined per Tweet if you can't produce a copy of this public record. So as of today I'm printing out whatever I've sent and exploring the options in the link above. Anyone have a recommendation on how they digitally archive Tweets?
In Washington state, your city can be fined per Tweet if you can't produce a copy of this public record. So as of today I'm printing out whatever I've sent and exploring the options in the link above. Anyone have a recommendation on how they digitally archive Tweets?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Rob McNair-Huff on -
Walter, are there any defined "best practices" in this area yet? I archive everything that my office posts on Twitter, along with any DMs, dating back to the time that we started using the account, but I am not sure if maintaining a cut-and-paste archive in Word is really acceptable. I doubt a printed archive is acceptable either, since the requirement is to provide the records in their native format - which I would presume would be digital.
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Permalink Reply by Walter Neary on -
The digital format is called out in Washington state law, as I recall, so that's a darn good question here. I don't think everyone has that rule (state elected officials exempt themselves from the public records law entirely ;) The rules vary. I recently put in a FOIA to the Army and they responded with printouts of emails, and that's a common way of complying with public records law inquiries, so I'm thinking a Word doc is better than nothing and a good backstop. The best we've got going right now on these topics are the pages in and around http://citycouncilbloghandbook.wikispaces.com/Q%26A+on+record+reten... and http://citycouncilbloghandbook.wikispaces.com/Notes+on+legal+issues
but obviously it's still evolving. There's a desperate need to tie this all together, certainly for us in Washington state.
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Permalink Reply by Cyd Athens on -
Set up a corresponding e-mail address that is only used for the Twitter account. If you're using Outlook/Exchange, create a Public Folder which is the repository for any e-mail that comes in to that account. Subscribe to the Twitter account RSS feed using the corresponding e-mail address. Any tweets will then go into the Public Folder. One caveat here. If you have notifications for new followers enabled, you'll receive these in the Public Folder as well. Also I believe you only need to archive original content. If the tweets are posted through your web site using any of a number of integration tools, they'll be saved as part of your web infrastructure, so the Tweets become a secondary record.
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Permalink Reply by Cyd Athens on
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One question, Walter. Where did you find the info on the statutory fines, etc.? Is it in the RCW? Thanks.
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Permalink Reply by Walter Neary on
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Cyd if you mean Washington, I asked a friendly lawyer and he says it's under section 4 here: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=42.56.550
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Permalink Reply by Michael Riedyk on -
Thanks Walter, really helpfull.
Do you know comparable legislation in other states?
Are websites also considered to be public records?
Michael
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Permalink Reply by Ari Herzog, MPA on -
Not to sound obvious, but doesn't Google now store all tweets?
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Permalink Reply by Edward Williams on -
I realize this is an old thread, but I think it's still very relevant and a very interesting topic; it's not just twitter though, is it? This could be applied to anything out there. Michael, your question is a good one - I think the answer is yes.
Walter, what methods have you been using? Did you look at the options in the RWW article? Did you like any of them?
I like Cyd's suggestion - if you've got and outlook/exchange environment - public folder would work great. If, on top of that, you have some sort vault system in place then all your emails (tweets, that is) would get stored for a long time. Although, this probably wouldn't work with blogs or websites.
How about a sharepoint list or document library. I can think number of ways (some OOB and some requiring code) that you could send your tweets to sharepoint. And blogs could easily be put in document libraries as xml documents.
The article from RWW is a great one - thanks for pointing it out - I love the twistory; this one puts your tweets in your calendar - I think that's awesome.
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Permalink Reply by Cyd Athens on
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Walter,
Thanks for the RCW location.
Ari,
It's not the storage. It's the metadata that is created by the record. Twitter is easy as the metadata is included in each tweet. FeedMyInbox, https://www.feedmyinbox.com/, is another way to capture the RSS so that even if the account owner tweets from a mobile device, the tweet is harvested. TwInbox, http://www.techhit.com/TwInbox/twitter_plugin_outlook.html, integrates directly with Outlook, and, if posts are made from there, they can be captured automatically as they're sent.
Facebook, on the other hand, is a challenge. There is an application, FBLook, http://www.techhit.com/FBLook/, that integrates with Outlook, and allows the capturing of FB *posts* that way, but some of our users find it inadequate. They want the full-on FaceBook experience. We've been looking at ways to integrate Web 2.0 so that Twitter, Facebook, and the like are just secondary records. Under records retention requirements, those are treated differently. Problem is that we don't blog, or really do much other than maintain a flat web presence.
Unfortunately, what little we're hearing about this issue is in flux. One news story recommends retaining the records in such a way that the metadata is kept intact. The next advisory suggests that metadata is no longer required. Likely, this is an issue that won't be resolved until the first major lawsuit is decided in the courts.
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Permalink Reply by Walter Neary on
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We dive into the issue of metadata in the webinar we did in Washington State, and the ball is in play as the game rules differ state to state. I currently archive Tweets through Google Reader. Whether that's sufficient is not tested. The rules will vary from state to state. We've got a metadata issue in front of our state Supreme Court now. It's unclear if we need a legislative fix or not.
One thing that comforts me is the attorney saying in our Webinar that it seems very impractical that a court would demand the coding that Facebook uses to provide its service. But does that mean no one gets taken to court over the matter? Sadly, no ... frankly, what we all seem to be doing is proceeding with the best of intentions and doing what we can to nudge laws to catch up.
One idea that co-presenter and attorney Ramsey Ramerman suggested is that cities publish all material such as Tweets and blog posts on a city site, so that becomes the official archive that would need to be produced. That's touched on in our slideshow.
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Permalink Reply by Kira Honse on -
One thing to keep in mind is what is the retention schedules or policies. Here in Florida, the Secretary of State establishes the retention schedule that needs to be followed. My County hasn't taken a the jump into using social media. However, in researching this issue to make the jump, I came to the conclusion that for the most part equated tweets to press releases or transitory messages depending upon the content. The retention time is much shorter for those type of things.
As to the question of whether a hard copy; digital copy, word cut and paste copy is enough, I was not able to come to a satisfactory conclusion. Walter, I think a case out of your state discusses the "meta data" associated with emails.
And to throw a lawyer twist to it, e-discovery could provide guidance on what should be archived and more importantly how. Florida doesn't have e-discovery rules yet for the state courts, but the feds have for a while. The federal agencies and states with e-discovery rules could talk with their litigating attorneys as to what they need for e-discovery.
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Permalink Reply by Jeremy Bertrand on -
For Twitter records retention we have a developer who has created a program that uses the Twitter API. Every evening it runs and stores all the tweets we sent out for the day and stores it as an xml file. You can also use Tweetake.com, it works very well. I documented the difference in metadata that both options capture: Twitter: http://bit.ly/4yFGJw Tweetake: http://bit.ly/5aRuMz . We are happy to share the program that downloads the tweets with anyone who wants it, it was written in Python.
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