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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."
Are they kicking & screaming about it being a private account or something? I mean it doesn't sound like they are hiding anything by publicly asking people to use it to contact them temporarily.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Will those emails then be transfered to the official email server?
It's not just Republicans using insecure communications? Politicians don't consider or understand IT security? Go fig...
They don't already have e-mail addresses?
Is it me or does it bother anyone else that an institution like the White House doesn't have a dedicated IT staff?
I would like to think that there would be a staff to handle this kind of thing independent of the administration. Having a team who knows the ins and outs from administration to administration would cut down on transition time as well as maintain a set of standards. This also would certainly be a big boost in keeping things on the honest side.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
This is clearly a transitional measure, and not a concerted effort to hide communications from mandated records keeping procedures as Bush and Palin are accused of.
Seriously.. this place is turning into slashkos.
We can find political news anyplace else. This stuff really is not news for nerds and does not matter here.
whats with every single article on slashdot being tagged with "story" even this??
Mr itepower?
Anyone who works for government for a period of time realizes that there are things you don't want to commit to public record. Maybe they aren't scandalous, but it's just cautionary to keep the official email record as professional looking as possible. Palin got exposed, but I'm sure [favorite politician] has done this too.
(I work for a government entity)
I think it takes 3 minutes to create an account, including exchange.
How long does it take in the head office of the USA?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
It doesn't matter if you are accused of something if the accusation is not credible. Otherwise: I hereby accuse the Obama team of trying to hide information from public record.
In the case of Palin, a single email was found sent from someone on her staff to her account. It was not even shown that she had replied to it using that address. To simply describe this as "she has been accused of using her private email to hide records" is misleading to the extent of trolling. I would argue it should be even less controversial than the incident described here.
Will Obama be punished if a single one of his staff sends a public business to his private blackberry? Palin has been, in the media. I look forward to Obama getting the same punishment - "has been accused of criminal intent" might even make it to his Wikipedia page.
Thank god Obama would never use a Slashdot account to keep in touch, that would be ludicrous!
Btw, how about lunch @ 12.30pm?
Can anyone confirm that Mr. Azzup is a staffer? :o)
Stupid post =)
I support Obama, even canvassed for him, but I smell poo. This is actually worth considering because...
1) Google was Obama's #1 campaign contributor and has already received a number of "special considerations" that embed them into the Obama administration.
2) Once you start using an email address it is with you forever unless you're willing to dump all of your contacts. Not to mention force of habit.
3) Lame other reason here cause we must speak in threes to sound convincing.
Hate to be the paranoid guy when I'm usually working the opposite angle, but I don't like where this is going.
My poetry site welcomes the unusual.
They should just start calling gmail, "Goverment" Mail instead of "Google" mail.
"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Benjamin Franklin"
So you are saying that the IT changeover takes the longest amount of time for the transition? Or, the transition is wholly dependent on the IT changeover, and nothing can be done until the changes are made? Either you have some inside information, or your reasoning is flawed.
I should know, I am one.
Hold on.
Here we go.
STFU you little lost puppy sheeple blind following the blind self righteous little Republican cock weasel Bushite. Just because a Nazi like Bush uses your tongue for toilet paper does not give you the right to open your yap when nobody has pulled the string in your back. Bitch.
Brought to you by Trollcom.
you suck at the news
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It's the democrats, everybody knows that they cannot do anything wrong or have any ill intent.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
WHARRGARBL
wharrgarbl
Between using a temporary gmail account until your email server is set up and using a Yahoo mail account to conduct government business in secret without accountability or transparency.
GWB's IT Staff managed to "lose" massive amounts of email. These aren't the career professionals that serve one administration after the next.
It looks like we may see a more technologically enlightened administration this time around. The changeover, while painful, at least should function as an effective purge of the incompetent and/or corrupt predecessors.
Palin staff: already had government e-mail accounts, but used Yahoo accounts to conduct business that they did not want to reveal to the public.
Obama staff: losing one e-mail account before they gained their next one, so for a few hours they needed transitional addresses, and Gmail was free and easy to use.
If Obama staff continue to use Gmail for government business, THEN we can equate these two situations. But not until then.
Liberal? Conservative? Compare perspectives at Left-Right
Of course we won't get into the fact that it's ALWAYS been legal to have personal (IE unarchived) correspondence.
But hey, we suddenly "trust" the government now because they're Democrats.
Just like Kevin Mitnick did.
The problem with Palin's Yahoo use is that it was secret, for one, and second that the emails involved govt. business but weren't recorded anywhere. So, as long as the mails sent and received using Gmail are subsequently archived somewhere, there's no problem. Whether they will be? Who knows.
Only criminals require privacy. The Obama team has as much clearance as Bush did and should have access to everything.
...the e-mail servers, for which the White House is infamously known, seemed to be down.
Well, duh! You can't really expect a server to boot immediately after someone runs shred /dev/hda.
that was the real problem, you missed it...
This is not about a technical protocol being more secure this is about an organization.
How many employees does google have world wide? how many have been screened to the same level that folks in the federal government have? You are putting mail from executive employees onto a mail server read by people not vetted to be/not to be security threats from more than a half dozen nations...
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
I argue, again, that Obama, as does any President, has the right to set up a communications infrastructure that is private and unrecordable. But, even if we put that issue aside, how far up on the priority list is this issue, versus this list.
a) jobs
b) budget deficit
c) looming entitlements meltdown
d) not one, but two wars
e) aligning tax rates and health care with NATO allies
f) trade imbalances with asia
just to throw a couple out there.
If we're going to be political, can we talk about something important?
This is my sig.
they are using google docs for collaboration...
"Ahh! Arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of you!" --Londo Molari
As you can read in the Washington post the Obama staff walked into the White House and discovered that the whole place was a mess. From the article I posted here: "The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software.". It doesn't go into details but... 6 year old software? And they claim to uphold strict security standards to prevent any cyber crime?
That smells like a huge dose of incompetence to me. And in relation to that I also hope that the new administration will take a very close look at what the Bush administration has added to the e-mail archives. As this site reported some months (?) ago; the Bush admin. archived approx. 26Gb worth of data, the largest amount ever. Makes you wonder... Quality through quantity perhaps?
what kind of shitty post is this ? the poster tries to show obama administration in a bad light as if they commenced any unethical practice, or violated any laws, trying to show what they did same as palin crookery.
all they did was to create gmail addresses UNTIL WHITE HOUSE EMAILS ARE GIVEN TO THEM, so that people will be able to contact them through those email addresses. not only that, but the addresses were PUBLICLY DISSEMINATED.
is there an option to put all future posts and comments of a user on ignore in slashdot ? so that i can avoid bullcrap ?
Read radical news here
here, meet the new troll ..
Read radical news here
that's what you should be typing in the console, if you are unable to perceive the simple logic in your parent post. computers are too dangerous for you to be using.
Read radical news here
Inside Obama's Emails
You know, this gets tossed around a lot, and it bugs the living hell out of me. Who the fuck cares? It's irrelevant! Praising Obama for using technology is no different than something like praising him because he likes rock music. It's a completely superficial thing, and doesn't affect his ability to be president in the least.
oh boy - are you stupid ?
whereas almost all leaders around the world cant tall an email from a messenger pigeon, there is a president at the helm of most powerful country in the world, who is also not only tech affluent, but also an addict of one of its implementations (blackberry).
excuse me, pal, but I do care. if you cant fathom the amount of i.t./tech/nerdiness/geekery/internet culture in this, turn in your geek card on your way out.
Read radical news here
I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but GMail allows any user to put dots (.) in their email address as they want to help filtering and general formatting. So really, anyone with a GMail account starting with "wh" already has an address you could format like this.
whiney@gmail.com == wh.iney@gmail.com == w.h.i.n.e.y@gmail.com
WHARRGARBL is the sound dogs make when they attempt to drink from a lawn sprinkler.
WHARRGARBL is also defined as a representation of what fundamentalist religious ranting sounds like to unbelievers, which is more likely the correct meaning in this case since the story is the kind of thing that right-wingers can get worked up about nowadays.
Putting moderation advice in your
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17831.html Doesn't look like Obama likes to talk unprepared, or without his prompter or the people who answer questions for him as they did at the Gitmo announcement. What a shill!
James Coburn plays the psychiatrist in the movie "the president's analyst". Someone wants to know what the president is thinking so he has to run. When he finally realizes that all his telephone conversations are bugged he asks "who could bug every telephone call in the country".
Who could bug every e-mail conversation in the whitehouse?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I heard that the White House kitchen staff was in disarray so the staffers set up a turkey slaughter house on the White House lawn and Obama did an interview in front of it. Will they ever learn?
You meant "whitehouse.gov" (Office of the POTUS) and "change.gov" (Office of the President-Elect), not "whitehouse.org" (parody site) and "change.org" (activism in general), didn't you?
Palin already had an official government account.
That said, I think this suggests a need for the government to set up some sort of official email system for transition officials. @transition.whitehouse.gov maybe, and set up autoforwarding on the 20th.
And the fact that the republican staff were adults, not vindictive children throwing a temper tantrum.
At least we dont have to worry about a college student using wikipedia to "hack" into these accounts. ...Or do we?
Why does there need to be much downtime between the change in power? Couldn't the Office of the President Elect establish a ready-to-go e-mail server, that would be slid into place on the government rack at whitehouse.gov at Noon on Tuesday?
I love Gmail, but this is ridiculous. Google has no contract with the government, its terms of service void most liability (that's what "free" means).
It also uses a non-reserved namespace. Right now, within a few minutes, I could sign up for wh.obamma, wh.barrak-obama, wh1te.house and any number of other unclaimed addresses and possibly pick up sensitive email sent to misspelled addresses.
Regardless of whether all email is encrypted or signed (and remember, this is the government, half of which is probably using Outlook), this is a bad idea. Kudos for using Gmail, which is the best webmail service in existence, but this shouldn't have been necessary.
Who the hell is running IT at the White House? Shouldn't they have set up .gov accounts for the entire administrative staff some time back in November? What was the hold-up?
I get notification from my HR department about new employees at least two weeks prior to their start date. In that time I and my staff create email accounts, domain accounts, set network permissions etc... Then on their first day everything is set and ready to go. Occasionally employees are actually given web access to email before they officially start work (but not before paperwork is signed). Our employee manual specifically forbids using outside email services such as Google, Yahoo, etc... for corporate email. Not so much for security but for auditing and accountability reasons.
There is no reason why the outgoing IT staff at the White House could not, at the very least, create email accounts for the incoming administration prior to their arrival. I sincerely hope that when the time comes for the O-Man and his cohorts to leave office that they don't go through this same mess. Inexcusable.
- SR
I already got my wh.Lastname address have you? I'm a white house staffer LOL
We have a huge and expensive government. The white house, arguably, is the most powerful single entity (congress by law is more powerful, but that requires agreement - the president only has to agree with himself). And they can't get e-mail setup either 1) before (they had over a month) or 2) during. How long does it take to setup an e-mail account?
As for that, if they are using gmail for non-secure e-mail then it should not be a huge deal. As long as they realize this e-mail account is for work, not personal reasons. The difference between this and sarah palin is that she had a work e-mail they do not have one. They are not using this just for the hell of it, they are using this because they do not have another option.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
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.
What else were supposed to do when they got to the White house and found IIS? Look what that did to Bush's email, they still can't find most of it and the guy who did their real mail off site with GNU/Linux is dead. Sheesh, give Oboma a break he got email that works up and running on day 1. We can be sure that he'll get onsite GNU/Linux email up in a week or so.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Actually, if you look at the Obama crowd, they (Jarret, Axelrod, etc.) are from the UofC/Hyde Park/Harold Washington Party crowd -- the folks that beat the Machine in Chicago, at least for a while.
You could argue that since then, a new and bigger Machine has evolved, I suppose, but I don't think that would be accurate.
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
Comment removed based on user account deletion
remember you are talking about government contractors.
Rules of government contracting
Rule #1 extend contract
Rule #2 everything you do costs money you need more
Rule #3 everything is broken
Rule #4 about to get let go see rules 1-3
the bush administration probably had the servers burned to no one could ever retrieve anything. The white house probably needed new servers and probably had new staff who needed to install everything from scratch.
either that or they are transitioning from exchange to something a little more robust like Linux. Makes sense.
I don't worry, it will catch up the the bush administration. someone is going to jail, though sadly it will probably be the tech who followed directions and purged data.
They're using their grammar skills there.
First off, failure to retain records is not a moral obligation. I would argue that, morally, keeping everyone's secrets written down and then exposed actually undermines the Presidency and significantly so. Before the PRA, if you were a private person and had a secret, and shared it with the President, it would stay secret. Now, after the PRA, anyone with a FOIA can now sue to get your secrets, as they are part of his or her official correspondence, and the only thing that stops that process is the Reagan and Bush executive orders which the House now wants to stop. It's stupid. If the left gets its way, no one in their right mind with any information of consequence would talk to the President in any way, leaving the office flying bind. Sigh.
From a "right" perspective, the right to Presidential privacy is documented in the sense that there is no enumerated power in the Constitution to actually tell the President how to conduct his or her business, or to expropriate the President's property. So, in that sense, the PRA of 1978 is flat out unconstitutional, as is the revision to the PRA coming from the Congress.
As a matter of a technicality, e-mail and chat are not covered by the PRA, because you argue that they are more like a telephone conversation, which is NOT recorded, than they are correspondence. The revision to the House is a law that "fixes this", but again, I would argue that this law is as unconstitutional as the PRA is.
This is my sig.
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.
User maintains more than a dozen sockpuppet accounts on Slashdot.
If anyone in government starts using a whitehouse.org email account EVER then you Americans can look forward to a new era in comedic government.
And what does this have to do with Sarah Palin exactly? The title of the story didn't need her name in it, nor is this even news.
Hey look a front page story by Timothy that links to the Washington Times. With their powers combined they form Captain Troll Slashdot Post! I'm honestly surprised there was no mention of Natalie Portman or hot grits.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Who would not hate Bush PCs?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Why is there ever, ever any need to link to that sh*tbag of propagandistic swill, the Washington Times? Can't we find something more responsible on this, like, say, a crayon drawing by a small child?
1st reason: you're comment was obnoxious.
2nd reason: you're sig:
if(dislikesApple()||isLibertarian()){$mod--;}//© Slashdot
Here's the thing, I don't disagree with any part of your sig. Part of the reason I'm modding you down is to send a message that you're not going to 'shame' anyone into changing their moderation habits. My mod points are going to be used as I see fit, moderation policy be damned, and if I decide that I don't like you, or some viewpoint you hold, I might choose express myself by bitchslapping your slashdot karma. You can wail and gnash your teeth and throw ashes on your head in sorrow, but when I have mod points burning a hole in my pocket, whiny sigs like this only serve as a flashing, neon bullseye for an otherwise unremarkable comment. HTH.
I have my doubts about this article. www.doyouwantacake.com has an article about a person who signed up for one of these email addresses and raises a good point that this "wh.lastname@gmail" is probably just a hoax that someone played on this reporter because the emails are already up for grabs. I think this is just something people want to believe and that it is most likely that people just switched from their campaign emails to their new white how emails.