I’m piqing this post because otherwise the topic will go under: It’s about the question of whether politicians have to archive SMS and hand them out on request, just like they do with many other documents (or should do, many bodies resist freedom of information requests anyway ). The question behind this is whether politicians in a democracy need a “safe space” for communication in which they can exchange information confidentially without feeling that this exchange could fail public record become.
The argument that SMS secrecy helps democracy becomes a bit absurd, but when it comes to a concrete deal and billions in taxpayer money. As in the specific case that my SZ colleague Thomas Kirchner describes:
Previously, the New York Times reported that the exchange of cell phone messages between the two [Kommissionspräsidentin Ursula von der Leyen und Albert Bourla, Chef des US-Pharmaunternehmens Pfizer] in February 2021, at the height of the corona pandemic, made a decisive contribution to a spectacular deal: supplying Europeans with a total of 1.8 billion vaccine doses from Pfizer. But the EU Commission refuses to release the text messages.
Now she’s complaining New York Times, after Alexander Fanta from netzpolitik.org had tried to get hold of the SMS. Actually, the EU rules also include the often seemingly informal SMS and Whatsapp messages: they too must be made available to the public on request. But the Commission is fighting back, and many politicians are horrified by the idea that citizens could see these agreements.
What is interesting here is how technology shapes information policy: text messages are written on the side, but they remain recorded like other documents. What makes it different from email? On the other hand, without total surveillance, it’s impossible to capture everything that happens in phone calls, so in any case, there’s still that one form of communication that doesn’t get recorded and allows politicians to exchange information without fear of publicity.
I’m excited to see how the lawsuit goes.
(By the way, bankers have a similar problem with Whatsapp chats.)