Foreign Corrupt Practices Act / 15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1 - Communications Audit (SF Controller) - Immediate Disclosure Request

RE: Foreign Corrupt Practices Act / 15 U.S.C. §§ 78dd-1 - Communications Audit - Immediate Disclosure Request

To Whom It May Concern:

** NOTE: Please redact your responses correctly! This is a public mailbox, and all of your responses (including disclosed records) may be automatically and instantly available to the general public on the MuckRock.com service used to issue this request (though I am not a MuckRock representative). **

We request under the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance (Ordinance) and the California Public Records Act (CPRA) the following items from your agency.

Please follow the Ordinance precisely as I am auditing your agency's public records regimen; as you are well aware, every violation of the Sunshine Ordinance will be appealed.

Also note it is not relevant whether your office believes the FCPA is relevant to these records or your operations; the Act is being used instead to precisely define the records requested in legal terms.

We remind you of your obligations to provide electronic records in ANY format we request, as long as such format is either the original format you hold them in (CPRA), "available" to you, or "easily generated" (SFAC 67.21(l)). Therefore, e-mails exported in the .eml or .msg format with all non-exempt headers, metadata, attachments, etc. are our requested formats.

However, if you choose to convert emails, for example, to PDF or printed format, to easily redact them, you must ensure that you have preserved the full content of the original email record, which contains many detailed headers beyond the generally used From/To/Subject/Sent/etc. For the chat apps, a screenshot or print-out is acceptable.
If you use PDF, use properly redacted searchable or text pdfs.

Do not print and scan records stored electronically.

If you provide PDFs instead of original email files, only give a few of the headers or lacking attachments/images, and/or improperly withhold public records that exist on private accounts/devices you may be in violation of SF Admin Code and/or CPRA, and we may challenge your decision at the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, Supervisor of Records, judicially, and/or via any other remedies available to us.

You must justify all withholding (redacting is a form of withholding), with specificity (SFAC 67.26, 67.27).

You must provide the names and emails or similar identifiers of foreign government officials - business emails are not protected under Constitutional personal privacy.

Provide records in a rolling fashion. Do not wait for all records to be available.

Please provide only those copies of records available without any fees. If you determine certain records would require fees, please instead provide the required free notice of which of those records are available and non-exempt for inspection in-person if we so choose. Please use email to respond.

I look forward to your prompt disclosure.

This is also a 7-day request under SFAC 67.21(c) for the quantity, nature, and form of each set of requested records.

A. electronic copy of all communications sent or received between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, by any of the listed persons, where at least one party in the communication is a "foreign official" as defined under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(f)(1)(A) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction), and in an electronic format as specified above, with all headers, metadata, timestamps, attachments, appendices, exhibits, and inline images, except those explicitly exempted by the Ordinance, including but not limited to messages sent or received on each official government email, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, text/SMS/MMS, Google Hangouts/Allo/Duo, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Twitter, Reddit, QQ, Momo, Wangxin, YouTube, Twitch, Slack, Vk, OK.ru, Livejournal or any other social media, chat, or instant messaging account of the following persons,
1. Controller
2. Deputy Controller
3. all persons with title containing "Deputy" "Chief" or "Executive" (even if acting)
4. all Principal Auditors
5. all Supervising Auditors
6. the agency's official accounts for the agency as a whole

B. electronic copy of all communications sent or received between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, by any of the listed persons, where at least one party in the communication is a "foreign political party or official thereof or any candidate for foreign political office" under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(a)(2) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction), and in an electronic format as specified above, with all headers, metadata, timestamps, attachments, appendices, exhibits, and inline images, except those explicitly exempted by the Ordinance, including but not limited to messages sent or received on each official government email, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, text/SMS/MMS, Google Hangouts/Allo/Duo, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Twitter, Reddit, QQ, Momo, Wangxin, YouTube, Twitch, Slack, Vk, OK.ru, Livejournal or any other social media, chat, or instant messaging account of the following persons,
1. Controller
2. Deputy Controller
3. all persons with title containing "Deputy" "Chief" or "Executive" (even if acting)
4. all Principal Auditors
5. all Supervising Auditors
6. the agency's official accounts for the agency as a whole

C. electronic copy of all communications sent or received between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, by any of the listed persons, where at least one party in the communication is a "foreign official" as defined under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(f)(1)(A) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction), and in an electronic format as specified above, with all headers, metadata, timestamps, attachments, appendices, exhibits, and inline images, except those explicitly exempted by the Ordinance, including but not limited to messages sent or received on each PERSONAL email, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, text/SMS/MMS, Google Hangouts/Allo/Duo, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Twitter, Reddit, QQ, Momo, Wangxin, YouTube, Twitch, Slack, Vk, OK.ru, Livejournal or any other social media, chat, or instant messaging account of the following persons, under a City of San Jose v Superior Court (2017) search.
1. Controller
2. Deputy Controller
3. all persons with title containing "Deputy" "Chief" or "Executive" (even if acting)
4. all Principal Auditors
5. all Supervising Auditors

D. electronic copy of all communications sent or received between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, by any of the listed persons, where at least one party in the communication is a "foreign political party or official thereof or any candidate for foreign political office" under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(a)(2) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction), and in an electronic format as specified above, with all headers, metadata, timestamps, attachments, appendices, exhibits, and inline images, except those explicitly exempted by the Ordinance, including but not limited to messages sent or received on each PERSONAL email, Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Messenger, text/SMS/MMS, Google Hangouts/Allo/Duo, Signal, Telegram, WeChat, Twitter, Reddit, QQ, Momo, Wangxin, YouTube, Twitch, Slack, Vk, OK.ru, Livejournal or any other social media, chat, or instant messaging account of the following persons, under a City of San Jose v Superior Court (2017) search.
1. Controller
2. Deputy Controller
3. all persons with title containing "Deputy" "Chief" or "Executive" (even if acting)
4. all Principal Auditors
5. all Supervising Auditors

E. all records of all payments sent or received, or contracts/agreements in effect, between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, where at least one party in the transaction or contract is a "foreign political party or official thereof or any candidate for foreign political office" under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(f)(1)(A) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction)

F. all records of all payments sent or received, or contracts/agreements in effect, between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, where at least one party in the transaction or contract is a "foreign political party or official thereof or any candidate for foreign political office" under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(a)(2) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction)

G. all records of all payments sent or received, or contracts/agreements in effect, between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, where at least one party in the transaction or contract is a "foreign political party or official thereof or any candidate for foreign political office" under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(f)(1)(A) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction) and another party is any officer or employee of your agency, under City of San Jose v Superior Court (2017)

H. all records of all payments sent or received, or contracts/agreements in effect, between and including Jan 1 2017 and Oct 8 2019, where at least one party in the transaction or contract is a "foreign political party or official thereof or any candidate for foreign political office" under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-1(a)(2) (and as those terms have been interpreted by courts of competent jurisdiction) and another party is any officer or employee of your agency, under City of San Jose v Superior Court (2017)

I:
1. all instruments used to inquire of any person as to whether they possess any responsive records above, and all of their responses (both for business and personal accounts)
2. all requests/tickets/etc. used to inquire of your IT persons or the Dept of Tech to retrieve responsive records, and all of their responses

Sincerely,
Anonymous

Apologies - Request E and G should be corrected to replace the quoted phrase with "foreign official" (the citation is already correct). You may consider this an amendment of the request OR you may consider this a subsequent immediate disclosure request with all the same caveats of the original.

Whatever happened to this request?

NOTE: Please be certain you have properly redacted all of your responses. Once you send them to us, there is no going back. The email address sending this request is a publicly- viewable mailbox. All of your responses (including all responsive records) may be instantly and automatically available to the public online via the MuckRock.com FOIA service used to issue this request and various services that mirror those documents for analysis and research by journalists and the general public (though the requester is an anonymous user, not a representative of MuckRock). Nothing herein is legal, IT, or professional advice of any kind. The author disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited to all warranties of merchantability or fitness. In no event shall the author be liable for any special, direct, indirect, consequential, or any other damages whatsoever. The digital signature, if any, in this email is not an indication of a binding agreement or offer; it merely authenticates the sender. Please do not include any confidential information, as I intend that these communications with the government all be disclosable public records.