White House Obfuscates Email

markgo2k writes "Do you want to email the president? This John Markoff, New York Times story (reprinted here in the non-subscription Seattle PI) details how the White House no longer promises to read anything you send to president@whitehouse.gov. Instead, you must navigate a multi-page website AND confirm your submission via email. Oh, and they only want to talk about subjects that are of interest to them." The web-form system appears to be a bit overloaded at the moment.

Comments

Barriers to entry

[XianDeath]

I noticed this policy the other day while looking for a method of having the daily press briefings emailed to me. I believe this is really just a form of crowd control. The easier it is to contact your elected official, the more often you'll do so. Make the barrier to entry higher, i.e. a phone call which costs you money, and you raise the barrier to entry. I can imagine how many emails they get a day especially since they're probably on every spam email list in the world.

On a side note, for what it's worth, the daily press briefings contain more 'hard' news than I see in the average evening news broadcast. (On a politically snider note, it's also much easier to understand how bad off things are when you can actually read the daily obfuscations with your own eyes, and in most cases, watch them in streaming video sans interepretation by talking heads.)

Also, say what you will about Clinton, but he was the first president to really make an effort at utilizing the internet to diseminate information regarding the executive branch, though granted he was the first president of the 'internet era.' There are several cool innovations he made and several excellent articles over at Slate regarding the White House web (Article #1 and Article #2) historically.

Re:We've come a long way baby

[cybercuzco]

He was an accessible private citizen until he got shot. Then he wasnt quite asacessible as before, but could still ride about in the open, Until another one got shot. Now his freedom is curtailed in the name of security, and he has neither security or freedom.

Re:We've come a long way baby

[welshsocialist]

Actually, one did. First was McKinley, then Kennedy, then Reagan. The only difference being that Reagan survived.

Looks like someone slept through history class. The first attempt on a President was Jackson in 1835. Lincoln was killed in 1865 by Booth, an actor. The next President to be shot was Garfield in 1881 by Charles J. Guiteau, a disappoined unemployed guy. The next assassination happened in 1901 when McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist. Between 1901 and when Kennedy was shot in 1963 by Lee Oswald, there were two attempts on Presidents. One happened in 1912 against former President Theodore Roosevelt on a campaign stop. The second happened against Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. The shots missed Roosevelt but killed Anton Cermak, the Mayor of Chicago. After Kennedy's death, there were three attempts on a Presidents life. The first two happened in September 1975 against Gerald Ford while in California. The third happened against Reagan in 1981.

BTW, I am an history geek!