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Strike three for White House on Internet information

By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor
09/02/09 2:23 PM EDT

President Obama's White House does not exactly have a stellar record when it comes to personal information and the Internet. In less than one month, the president's new media team has come under fire for asking citizens to report "fishy e-mails" about Obama's health care reform plan and for e-mail messages from David Axelrod that somehow went to people who did not sign up for them.

So when the Executive Office of the President seeks a contractor to archive the usernames and possibly other data from social network users, it is certainly worth asking them why. We did. We have not heard back from the White House yet.

The National Legal and Policy Center's Ken Boehm has written today on EOP's 51-page contract solicitation for a web archiving service. Among other things, the solicitation notes that the White House is already archiving the content of seven social networking sites where it "maintains a presence." The contractor's purpose is to comply with the Presidential Records Act by saving White House postings to Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, slideshare, Vimeo and YouTube.

But the solicitation also specifically includes archiving all messages sent to the White House accounts, and comments posted by users on those social networking pages. "Out of an abundance of caution," the document states, "we are treating comments made by non-PRA personnel on sites on which a PRA component has a presence as presidential records, requiring them to be captured or sampled."

The release of some of the data gathered -- to a future presidential library, or for any other purpose -- could run afoul of the Privacy Act. And the White House seems to leave itself a lot of room with respect to possible uses of the social networking data it stores. For example, will critical comments on EOP's wall secretly land Facebook users on a blacklist? Will other users begin receiving unsolicited messages, or even requests to sign up for Facebook applications?

If not for the events of August, it probably wouldn't even be an issue.

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Reader Comments

All comments on this page are subject to our Terms of Use and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Examiner or its staff. Comment box is limited to 250 words.

ggordon

Sep 2, 2009

To Obama, trust is not important. Looking at who these people are in the White House - Obamas, the czars, his appointees, his political operatives... these are bad people who should not be trusted by the American populace.
Tax cheats, avowed Marxists, cheaters of all kinds.

Thoroughbred

Sep 2, 2009

Would someone answer the question if all the social networks have a global audience doesn't the EU have a very strict privacy law for the internet and wouldn't this create a legal issue for the socail networking sites to be compliant of these privacy lawsif the US government insists collecting this data collection ? Would this cause the EU to shut down Facebook and Twitter ?

Thoroughbred

Sep 2, 2009

http://privacylaw.proskauer.com/2009/07/articles/data-privacy-laws/european-privacy-law-and-social-networking/

Here is the privacy laws with the EU and social networking sites

Soldier4110

Sep 3, 2009

What will the White House come up with next? Someone needs to get those people on a Ritalin-type medicine. Those people are seriously ADHD. Maybe if only Obama and a handful of advisors ran the executive branch, things would go more smoothly. But with three dozen or so hare-brained kids (masquerading as adults) running around the White House, too.......I can see things getting weird there. Here's a thought......hire the Duggars as consultants......they seem to have things under control.

g55rumpy

Sep 3, 2009

B. Frank was right:"Who told you to trust the government?"

On Guard'

Sep 3, 2009

The Gauntlet has been thrown down.Hackers - you heard what he said.Knock yourselves out!

StepIntoTheLight

Sep 3, 2009

This administration has clearly taken a few pages from the Chavez/Castro/Putin playbook. Obama and his illegal czars must be brought to justice for their "Big Brother" Orwellian activities to control and suppress freedoms granted to the American people in our Constitution.

Don M

Sep 3, 2009

I heard rumors of this about six weeks ago. Since that time, I've had very serious problems with processing emails and/or surfing the internet. I usse two computers, and have the problems with both. One of my computers is only a year old, and is "LOADED" with capacity and processing capabilities. Perhaps this is one of Obama's intended uses of internet information. Is it possible that Obama and his "hinchmen" are using this information to block objections to Obamacare? I didn't notice the problems until I started sending information along to my email contacts to advise them of problems I have had with Obamacare.

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Strike three for White House on Internet information

By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor
09/02/09 2:23 PM EDT