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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.
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.
Yes, email sent to gmail addresses is insecure, unlike email sent to regular whitehouse.gov addresses, which is magically encrypted by the NSA's army of highly trained ninja code monkeys as it leaves the senders' machines.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Can anyone confirm that Mr. Azzup is a staffer? :o)
The problem is that every administration brings in their own IT staff which, to the best of my knowledge, doesn't get their hands into anything until day 1.
It's a pretty poor system, IMHO. Imagine a complete refresh of IT staff in an office. There would be chaos for weeks.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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."
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Because whitehouse.gov mail is more secure? It's e-mail, people. You know. SMTP. It's sent in plaintext over the wire through SMTP servers.
That's why stuff like PGP, GPG, etc. exist.
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The delay is not in clicking 'create account' on the administrative interface, or running a list of names through a Perl script; it's in processing the paperwork that ensures that the people getting accounts are who they say they are, and that their account access is appropriately restricted.
I went to school with someone who was on the Bush IT team. Nice guy btw. Anyway while Bush did actually work with Obama from a security standpoint, there was no such working together when it came to IT. Not implying anything malicious either, it just didn't happen. Bush's people were VERY busy making sure nothing that wasn't supposed to be there would be hanging around for the Obama people to come across.
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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.
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.
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Obama is the most technologically fluent President ever.
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.
What's not to like?
So far? Lying to us, ranging from the petty ("My grandma survived WWI, which she was born after") to the serious ("I oppose telecom immunity in the wiretapping fiasco"). Spouting elitist bullshit that implies only those pitiable poor people are religious, and favor strong gun rights (and, by extension, implying that these are things which are to be stamped out, rather than the purely personal choice they are). He appointed a man who didn't pay his fucking taxes to be Secretary of the Treasury. If you or I don't pay taxes? We go to jail. If Obama's buddy doesn't pay taxes? He gets appointed to a high government position.
The tragic part about Obama, especially his FISA vote, and Sec. Treas. appointment, is that he's shown us that, contrary to what he'd like us to believe, he's just another politician serving his ends, not ours. And yes, there is stuff to like. I'm happy he ordered the closing of Gitmo (assuming he doesn't quietly back down on that, but we'll see). I'm happy he's been pushing an open government, not a closed one (again, only time will tell if this is sincere, or mere rhetoric that is spouted while the public's eye is focused upon him).
I hope he makes our country a much better one, but so far, there's as much bad as there is good. Let's not pretend the man is unblemished. At the same time, let's not pretend he's worthless either, since he seems to be doing some good. As usual, the die-hards on both sides are wrong.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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.)
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
Only criminals require privacy. The Obama team has as much clearance as Bush did and should have access to everything.
I used to work in WHCA (White House Communications Agency). I don't know how the PC side of things was or is being handled, however I'm quite aware of how the mainframe side of things is handled. And I'd be very surprised that things are working at 12:01. For the mainframe, on the day of inauguration, full system backups are performed. These backups are then sent to the national archives. After the backups are made, then *everything* associated with the old administration is removed from the system. Only after this is done are new accounts created. I think it would be reasonable to assume that simular procedures are done on the PC side of the house. And somehow I don't think that PDC's are designed to be effectively wiped at the "flip of a switch". Additionally, I don't think that the PCs sitting on each person's desk can be remotely sanitized. And yes, even though they're instructed to not save anything on the local PC, they still do. And it still needs to be cleaned up.
And unfortunately, this can't be done ahead of time since frankly the government continues to function under the old administration until the new one enters. So effectively none of this work can even start until after business hours on the day before inauguration.
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.
"I wonder what kind of ads showed up next to White House emails concerning political appointments?"
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Anyone who didn't see that one coming from a million miles away deserves a shot in the balls.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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?