Slashdot Mirror
White House Press Secretary's Tweets Archived
RedTeflon writes "The White House spokesman, who has just started using Twitter, told reporters this afternoon that he met with government lawyers yesterday to determine whether his tweets would be archived along with emails and just about everything else produced at the White House. After deliberation, White House lawyers have decided that any and all tweets will be archived in keeping with the Presidential Records Act of 1978."
Basically, he's doing what a normal company would call PR. He really isn't allowed to express his own personal opinion, he's spouting the official opinions of the executive branch of the US Government. Therefore, what he posts should be part of the official records, he shouldn't be allowed to say "I didn't tweet that!"
Are they seriously going to bother archiving his 140-character ramblings? Why would anyone ever find it necessary to lookup one of the stupid little messages the White House spokesperson has left to his followers?
Recording everything is important precisely because we don't always know what is important now. In 30 years these could help provide valuable insight to how the Obama administration communicated with the public. Or if there is some claim of illegal behavior, his tweets could help establish where he and others in the administration were at specific times. Sure, neither of those two seem that likely. But the point is that we don't know. Since archiving takes very little resources, it makes sense to archive pretty much everything.