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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.
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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...
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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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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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