Posted on 09/18/2009 12:11:01 PM PDT by Admiral_Zeon
The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information.
"The White House has not been adequately transparent, particularly on how it makes use of new social media techniques, such as this example," he said.
Defenders of the White House actions said the Presidential Records Act requires that the administration gather the information and that it was justified in taking the additional step of asking a private contractor to "crawl and archive" all such material. Nicholas Shapiro, a White House spokesman, declined to say when the practice began or how much the new contract would cost.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Maybe it is....
but just maybe the SHTF before he gets a chance to use the info.
I await the so called media and the ACLU, to jump right on this
ARF
like they did with Van jones
Spending
ACORN
Miranda rights
dropping charges against black racists
etc
etc
etc
the so called media
ACLU
SPLC
have all lost their minds, even so far as going after a cross put up over 70 years ago in a desert to remember WW1 Vets
It is now being hidden by a piece of wood over it.
This is how pathetic they have become
There’s a law requiring this kind of disclosure upon Federal paperwork, and I’d expect it to extend to the Web.
"The regular people just don't understand how we work."
Those are the people that need to be kicked out, and they will exist across any and all administrations. If a true conservative got in, they would have to expend a tremendous amount of political capital to clean house, but it needs to be done.
You can thank Obama’s Czars. Even Congress doesn’t know what they are doing.
With all the juveniles using those websites, coule a care for ‘gathering of porn material’ be pushed?
I don’t think you people read the article correctly. If you post a comment on the Whitehouse Facebook page or the Whitehouse Myspace page, you are sending a communication TO THE WHITEHOUSE. Its just like sending them a letter. I believe they are required to keep all communications directed to them. This is not a big deal.
If he only collects stuff I put on facebook, he’s going to miss the far better (worse) words I send to my POS congresspuke (Driehaus D-rat Ohio) and my POS Senators (Brown D-rat Ohio and RINOVICH R-rat Ohio) on a weekly basis.
Please, someone who thinks this is a problem explain it to me.
The White House sets up an “official” account on youtube.com. They post videos of the President’s weekly addresses there, along with other video of the President an other high ranking officials. Should these postings by white house staff be archived in accordance with the Presidential Records act? If not, why not?
So you view one of these videos. You want to make a text comment, or perhaps you make a video response. You post this response in a public way on the Internet, on the YouTube web site. What level of privacy do you expect? And, is it wrong for the White House to archive correspondence it receives in this manner? You were responding to White House communications on an “official white house account.” Doesn’t the Presidential Records act require that communication to be archived?
Why is this a problem?
It seems they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t here. If they archive the messages received this way, privacy nuts feel it is some kind of invasion of privacy. And if they fail to archive these messages, and they disappear from the internet sites, and someone files a FOIA request for all correspondence and messages received by the white house on a certain topic, they will be screaming “coverup” if the white house officials responding to the FOIA request say, “we don’t archive messages received from youtube, twitter or facebook.”
Here is a clue for you privacy nuts. If you don’t want your communications archived, don’t post them on a publicly available web site.
One thing I would add, though. It would help if the white house placed some text on these official pages that make it clear that they are archiving information left through these channels in accordance with the Presidential Records Act. That way people can at least read what should be incredibly obvious to them if they just think a little bit.
| From the desk of cc2k: |
I’m gonna hold my breath while the ACLU jumps on this with all fours. . . /sarcasm
Whew! I’m safe.
I sent the article to the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), who knows they might nudge the ACLU /sarcasm
So if I post one of my home videos of my cats in response to a Whitehouse Youtube posting, my cat video will become part of the official government record? My cat videos will be cataloged and permanently stored on government computers? Historians and anthropologists may one day study my cat videos for insight into the prevailing socio-political mood?
Cool!
Thank you for doing that. I will sleep much better tonight. /sarcasm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.