A legislative task force is looking at how to keep the emails of University of Wyoming students private.
Currently most of UW student’s emails are legally the same as those sent by UW employees and other state workers. Those emails can be released to anyone who wants to take a look at them under Wyoming’s Public Records Act.
That fact disturbed some state legislators during a recent meeting of the Task Force on Digital Privacy. Sundance representative Tyler Lindholm says students are told that there emails could be public, but he is still concerned.
“The fact of the matter remains that we are talking about 17 and 18 year old men and women,” he says. “It might be something they overlook: talking to their folks back home, say. And that might be open to public records requests. To me that is terrifying.”
UW’s legal counsel told the legislators that students’ emails aren’t released often.
But it did happen last year, when the Laramie Boomerang Newspaper requested all university emails that commented on a then-pending bill that would have outlawed gun free zones.
The Task Force will decide whether to write legislation that would change this policy when the group meets again late next month.