Loads of politicians continue to skirt the requirements of open records laws by using personal email accounts to handle official business. Others simply implement voluntary/poorly defined data retention policies that ensure nothing of interest will be handed over to the public. Given a short enough retention period, any request can be stonewalled until the autodestruct has rendered responsive files unavailable.

This is what the UK government is doing. Tony Blair, the prime minister behind the implementation of the UK‘s Freedom of Information laws, has publicly lamented ever inviting the public into the conversation. It now appears they‘ll still be mostly excluded from any email correspondence.