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Obama Staffers Followed Palin's Email Lead On Inauguration Day
theodp writes "Using Yahoo's free e-mail service to conduct government business was good enough for Sarah Palin. And now the Washington Times reports that Obama staffers turned to Gmail on Inauguration Day to conduct their business. Those wishing to contact members of the incoming Obama administration were instructed to contact staffers at wh.LASTNAME@gmail.com until official White House e-mail addresses became available."
I know this is /. and I know people can't be bothered to read...
However, if you'd been following the story, you'd know the White House IT people dropped the ball. When the Obama staff walked in at 12:01 to take over, they had phones that didn't work, computers that didn't work, users couldn't log in, and the e-mail servers, for which the White House is infamously known, seemed to be down.
What bothers me is that, knowing this was coming, they didn't have everything tested and ready to go at the throw of a switch (or literally, the click of a mouse). I'm not even going to get into the whole, the staff isn't familiar with the Windows platform and wants Apple issue, because that was covered extensively a few days ago, except to say, it's not as if they haven't had since November to plan for this transition...
Will those emails then be transfered to the official email server?
Most likely, yes. FTFA:
In addition, Cherlin noted that any e-mail sent to the Gmail accounts "could be forwarded to White House accounts and subject to the Presidential Records Act."
My blog
Google's free Gmail accounts to work around the fact that their transition emails will go dark at 11 a.m. Tuesday, at least an hour before they will have access to their new government accounts.
When this was started it was noted in official White House policy that these email accounts will be archived with the rest of the official White House email. The issue with the previous administration was that they were using RNC accounts precisely because they wouldn't be archived and therefore can remain hidden from the press and future historians trying to delve into what made the Bush White House tick.
It's the archiving that is the problem, not the private mail service.
IT staff at the White House are actually career staff (not political appointees) at the Executive Office of the President. Their infrastructure is run mostly by contractors with five-year contracts assigned by the previous administration. (You can find vacancies there on http://www.usajobs.com/ if you search "Executive Office of the President.") To get an email address there, you have to actually be employed at EOP (White House is a part of EOP) and fill out the requisite paperwork. Using non-government emails for official government business a violation of the Presidential Records Act. It's been illegal for quite some time, and Obama criticized Bush for doing it. There's also nothing to prevent me from using wh.whatever@gmail.com and sending fake orders out.
The issue was never security. Dude, it's unencrypted e-mail, there's no such thing.
The issue was an attempt to dodge records retention laws that allow "we the people" to keep an eye on what our employees - public officials - are doing.
Since 1) the official e-mail accounts are not yet available, 2) it seems to be only for a few hours, and 3) in TFA, an Obama staffer notes that "could be forwarded to White House accounts and subject to the Presidential Records Act," these concerns don't seem to apply. (Though I wonder WTF these folks couldn't either be provided with the new e-mail addresses earlier, or hold the transition accounts a little longer.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Welcome to the government. Each needs to go through CAC setup. That's an "in person, get your photo taken and wait for the card to print, oh, whoops, this one didn't laminate right, let's retake..." type of process. Email and network access is non-existent before CAC access. Or, likely something similar. Every agency's a little different.
You can always track his campaign promises. As of right now, 7 are kept, 1 stalled, 14 in the works, and no status on 488. Not a bad start after 3 days.
"Thirdly, Obama has already made it clear that this White House is going to be much more transparant. Finally"
And Bill Clinton Promised to be the 'most ethical administration in history', W promised to 'change the partisan tone', ..., ...
Its frightening that you take a politician *especially one from the Chicago political machine* at his word..
The difference was that Bush always did the exact opposite of what he said, but this Obama puts his presidential powers where his mouth is:
PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDA
January 21, 2009
* Freedom of Information Act
* Pay Freeze
* Transparency and Open Government
You can't take the sky from me...
Really? why the hell do companies bother to put mail servers behind firewalls then... oh year because after transit you have the content sitting on the server. You do understand that having any data (mail, file, db) sit on a third parties equipment is pretty damn irresponsible, especially a third party whos TOS says:
"You acknowledge and agree that Subsidiaries and Affiliates will be entitled to provide the Services to you."
"you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services (or any features within the Services) to you or to users generally at Google's sole discretion, without prior notice to you."
"You acknowledge and agree that if Google disables access to your account, you may be prevented from accessing the Services, your account details or any files or other content which is contained in your account."
"YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SERVICES IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK AND THAT THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE.""
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
Let's start here:
White House Vandalized In Transition, G.A.O. Finds
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDE163CF931A25755C0A9649C8B63
But if you want, you can search for "clinton white house vandalism" if you like.
To be honest, I thought every one knew that transitions of the White House between parties were filled with this stuff.
Is the Bush staff playing dirty pool with the Obama staff? Probably, but its more of a tradition than an isolated Bush is Evil incident.
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008
and
but then
Is that the O'Reilly "No Spin" flavor of Truthiness you are sampling there or do you make your own Kool-Aid?
Since this is another US centric article and from the reads most people don't understand who Palin was and how the USA is setup is here is basic intro.
Palin is the governor of the STATE of Alaska who ran for a FEDERAL position. During the time she ran for the federal position she was still the state governor and did work as the state governor. She did state and political party work on a Yahoo account.
If she had been elected as Vice-President or had been working for the White House work related documents on Yahoo would of been illegal but she was not and was doing state related work and so far no-one has pointed to an Alaskan law saying she could not do it.
Not that this should be a shock, she had many claims put against her that were correct and permitted under Alaska law but members of the opposition political party figured they would use to attack her.
Now in the USA federal and state laws are separate and while many federal laws must be followed by the states, the laws that the article are complaining that governor Palin did not follow do not deal with the states.
I donno, seems like the real story is how backwards the whitehouse is technologically. A few quotes from the Washington Post story:
"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.
And:
The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.
And finally...
Another White House official whose transition cellphone was disconnected left a message temporarily referring callers to his wife's phone.
Several people tried to route their e-mails through personal accounts.
But there were no missing letters from the computer keyboards, as Bush officials had complained of during their transition in 2001.
And officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.
This doesn't seem to have much to do with trying to circumvent any sort of records keeping, but rather a way to function for a few days while a #&$%@# up system is worked out.
Though I admit, I would be more suspicious of the last president doing this then the current one, but I suspect with the last guy we wouldn't have heard about for 3 years until a whistle blower leaked it.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
oh my god will_die please stop, reading your posts is causing a headache of extreme nature that you must understand. first i thought you were posting this way on purpose as some kind of inverse meta-meta-irony to another poster but now i see it is your style and it hurts. You do see what it is that is wrong with your posts and are doing it on purpose correct? There is considerable risk of damage to the space time continuum if you persist.
Okay, so we have staffers using non-government email to conduct government business? There is at least one law on the books about archiving WH emails for various purposes. That they are relying on external systems at all for that purpose seems like a clear violation. Whether Palin did it or not does not justify the new WH staff violating the law. "He committed murder, so I can commit murder, too."
That they are using a rationalization means they know they are violating something. But now, they have established a shadow infrastructure that allows them to continue to carry on government business outside government channels. Nothing prevents them from continuing to use this shadow infrastructure after they have legitimate accounts.
I would have thought that most of these accounts could have been created during the transition. It's not like the previous transition, where members of the outgoing administration ripped the letter 'W' off the keyboards and slipped porn into the paper in printers and copiers. If the prior administration here caused any significant delay, you can bet your bippy the press would have informed by the incoming administration.
My point is 1) that the delay is probably a ruse, or at best a minor inconvenience and 2) the new administration has established a way to violate federal law.
Maybe we should all set up gmail accounts with WH....
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
The Bush staff had government accounts and chose to use RNC ones specifically to avoid oversight. And they did it for YEARS
did you skip this line when reading my post?
As a Republican I was just as upset about the Bush administration trying to hide official communications behind RNC email addresses, as the rest of the people on this site.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
did you skip this line when reading my post?
No. But you seemed to be saying that the day or two some Obama staff were using webmail, openly, because that had no official accounts yet, was comparable to the years that Bush staff covertly used non .gov accounts.