Montana Secretary of State Sends Wrong Response

A Clearly Incorrect Reply Finally Sent from Secretary Stapleton's Office

May 15, 2018

On May 15, the Montana Secretary of State's office finally got around to responding to my letter of January 16. Just for some statistics:

119 days (17 weeks or 3 months and 29 days)

Time between the letter being sent and the response being sent.

117 days (16 weeks and 5 days or 3 months and 27 days)

Time between the letter being received by Secretary Stapleton's office and a response being sent.

84 days (12 weeks or 2 months and 25 days)

Time between my first call to Secretary Stapleton's office and a response being sent. (In this call I was promised a response that afternoon. It seems that Secretary Stapleton's office thinks that if you can respond within 4 months, that's as good as "this afternoon.")

70 days (10 weeks or 2 months and 9 days)

Time between my second call to Secretary Stapleton's office and a response being sent. (In this call I was promised a response by the end of the week. It appears that Secretary Stapleton's office thinks weeks are over 70 days long!)

26 days (3 weeks and 5 days)

Time between questioning Secretary Stapleton in person in Butte during his Things That Matter tour and receiving a response.

So, yeah, the Montana Secretary of State's office did finally respond. But I'm not sure what they responded to. You can read the letter below, but it is clear that this is not a response to the letter I sent.

1. It incorrectly assumes that I think there should not be an online system for registration. In my letter of January 16 I clearly state, "Providing an online process as an option for those businesses [...] is a good choice."
2. It fails to address any of the issues I brought up in my letter of January 16, unless you want to say that restating the initial problem as a solution to the concern is addressing an issue.

In addition (or, well, kind of as noted above), this response reiterates some of the problems with the process. In particular internet safety and privacy issues. This is of particular concern since the Secretary Corey Stapleton and the Montana Secretary of State's office claim that they are educating Montana businesses about online safety and security and are working to keep businesses safe online.

If security is of concern, and if the Montana Secretary of State's office is striving to teach Montana Businesses how to be safer online, here are some basic pointers (some of these border on being remedial course content for those who have shown they do not know how to keep themselves safe online):

1. Users SHOULD NOT complete this process (or other sensitive or secure processes or financial transactions) from a public terminal (such as those at a public library or available to the public through a business, coffee shop, cafe, or school)
2. Users SHOULD NOT use a tablet, phone, laptop, or mobile device connecting on a public or open wi-fi connection (such as at a coffee shop, city park, cafe, or school) to complete this process (or other sensitive or secure processes or financial transactions)
3. Users SHOULD NOT have a friend, neighbor, son/daughter, sibling, etc. complete this process (or other sensitive or secure processes or financial transactions) for them
4. Users SHOULD NOT use a sibling's, neighbor's, friend's, son's/daughter's, etc's internet connection for this process (or other sensitive or secure processes or financial transactions)
5. Users SHOULD NOT have another member of the business or employee use their internet access to complete this process (or other sensitive or secure processes or financial transactions) for them
6. Users SHOULD NOT use a free email service for the email account used to file this information (or other sensitive or secure processes or financial transactions), particularly not Yahoo! or AOL, which both have long reputations of having their email systems and user information compromised.

But you'll see when you read this response from Secretary Stapleton's office that they recommend just the opposite:

It is quite clear from this response that the letter I sent to Secretary Stapleton was not read or considered, and that they just send a pre-fabricated, poorly thought out, canned response. And the fact that this is a canned response (and an incorrect one) makes it even more shameful that it took nearly FOUR MONTHS for Secretary Stapleton's office to respond.

In addition to demonstrating Secretary Stapleton's incompetence, this also shows how his departmental cuts, which he is so proud of, are so excessive that they are debilitating the Montana Secretary of State's office.