Obama Staffers Followed Palin's Email Lead On Inauguration Day 407
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."
Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This submission is a troll (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, I found this to be perhaps the least interesting
Parent is troll (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:How long? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a pretty poor system, IMHO. Imagine a complete refresh of IT staff in an office. There would be chaos for weeks.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree, but I can see a scenario someday whereby someone files a Freedom of Information Act request to Google. Must they comply?
Firstly, something tells me that 99.999% of emails to/from staffers directed to this account on this particular was logistical/planning. Secondly, unlike the Bush/RNC, they aren't going to continue using the accounts in an effort to hide anything. Thirdly, Obama has already made it clear that this White House is going to be much more transparant. Finally, pretty sure FOIA would be served to the White House, not Google. His answer, should someone want the emails, "pfft. Take them."
Re:politicians != understand IT security (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, for a little puzzle, ask yourself how long it would normally take to create hundreds of email accounts in a secured system?
About as long as it would take to create them in a regular system? Unless the person entering the account data has to do on-the-fly RSA encryption in their head.
Seriously, that security for @whitehouse.gov is (hopefully) tighter than for, say, GMail does not mean that accounts are not likely managed by a few folks via a sleek administrative GUI, just like it's done at any well-managed IT department at medium-sized to large organisations.
Re:Please Stop All the Obama Stories (Score:2, Insightful)
We can find political news anyplace else. This stuff really is not news for nerds and does not matter here.
It's a technology story, not just an Obama story (as was the last one involving cookies). E-mail is Internet tech, last I checked. Gmail is a state-of-the-art free Web-based e-mail service. Obama is the most technologically fluent President ever. What's not to like?
Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:3, Insightful)
IANAL, but:
Even a few hours before inauguration, using a whitehouse.org email address could be considered impersonating or forgery. I suspect most of these people had email address ending with @democrats.org (or even @rnc.org) which could be considered bad taste to use in an official use out of a campaign. Yeah, the best solution would have been a @change.org. Gmail comes second.
Anyway, it is disturbing that Google could potentially spy this.
Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:2, Insightful)
>unlike the Bush/RNC, they aren't going to continue using the accounts in an effort to hide anything. Thirdly, Obama has already made it clear that this White House is going to be much more transparant.
From: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/23/obama-spokesmans-debut-marked-by-discord/
"Although President Obama swept into office pledging transparency and a new air of openness, the press hammered spokesman Robert Gibbs for nearly an hour over a slate of perceived secretive slights that have piled up quickly for the new administration. It wasn't pretty."
Meet the new Boss... Same as the old Boss...
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
______ - insert whichever politician you dislike, McCain, Palin, or Obama
"It's not a great idea to run a government using web e-mail accounts. That's the word from experts, anyway, reacting to news that ______________ used web e-mail. The practice is dangerous, said experts, and can run counter to laws ensuring government is open and accountable -- By using non-governmental email systems, "Your information is out there available, beyond the official mechanisms there to protect it," said Amit Yoran, the nation's first cybersecurity chief. Yoran is now CEO of Netwitness Corp., a computer security firm for government and private entities.
"_______'s use of the private account to discuss public business - a practice reportedly shared by top aides - also raised concerns from open-government advocates, who fear the practice could impede the spirit of laws designed to preserve government communications and documents. Recently, the office has fought to withhold some emails from public release, saying they were exempt from disclosure because state law protected certain categories of communication, such as those related to the "deliberative process."
"Lawyer Meredith Fuchs of the Washington, D.C.-based National Security Archive has experience on this issue, having fought with the Bush White House over how it preserved emails, and why it allowed key personnel to use private email accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee. She believes ______'s email habits echo the worst practices of the Bush administration. "Maybe they did it because they thought the records wouldn't be disclosed," said Fuchs. "That raises issues possible destruction of evidence issues - if they expected litigation."
- http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=5830813&page=1 [go.com]
You don't really want them to inherit GWB IT Staff (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
This is not the same thing as Palin's situation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Thirdly, Obama has already made it clear that this White House is going to be much more transparant.
Your faith in a politician's ability to follow through with things they say is...naive, at best.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
"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..
Why would Bush have anything to hide? (Score:4, Insightful)
Only criminals require privacy. The Obama team has as much clearance as Bush did and should have access to everything.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its frightening that you take a politician *especially one from the Chicago political machine* at his word..
I wouldn't either, but in this case the Executive Orders he's been signing (particularly the one about FOIA requests) in the last couple of days indicate that he's prepared to back that one up with some action.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
On his first day, Obama closed the revolving door, closed the secret military base that was holding people without evidence, and instructed his staff to default to leaving files open instead of closed. [upi.com]
That was DAY 1.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
Its easy to do nice things quickly after all lets not forget , no matter how much the democrats want, that bush worked tightly with Ted Kennedy early in his admin to forge No Child Left Behind but FYI:
* Freedom of Information Act - Nice change but all it does is add review *not* in and of itself release info. If he follows through and controversial material is released (about his admin) I will be impressed.
* Pay Freeze - All hat no horse. He hires someone Jan 20th at a salary of 130,000 and implements a pay freeze if this freeze last less than a year what actual impact does it have? I did not get a raise within the first year at my current job am I under a freeze?
* Transparency and Open Government - Again its easy to say and hard to do, Im going to stay at my default position on all politicians until I see action and not words.
Re:That thing that just went over your head... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:3, Insightful)
The whitehouse was a functioning government office with thousands of employees up until 12:00 on Tuesday, and at 12:01 all ~3000 employees were replaced. If it all worked smoothly it would have been nothing short of a miracle.
What's amazing is that a should-have-been-expected bump in the road has turned into a partisan political battle, where Democrats say the Republicans lived in the technological dark ages for 8 years, and Republicans say the Democrats botched the transition.
This is the kind of story that the main-stream media should have filtered out and pushed to the back pages. You know... If responsible journalism still existed.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the promise of transparency is one that needs to be watched very closely.
Re:This submission is a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, except what Palin did was idiocy, and not a concerted effort to hide communications from mandated records keeping. Hence the tit-for-tat.
Our major political parties are run as if twelve year olds were in charge.
(Incidentally, I'd also chalk this case up to idiocy as well. Obama's staff should have gone without e-mail for the day. But clearly he's decided that day-1 is so important that his VP shouldn't even be making jokes. I'd hate to see what Obama is going to look like in four years if he already has the weight of the world on his shoulders after a few hours. I bet he wasn't expecting to have to give orders to attack something so soon... With the economic issues getting so much attention, I wonder if he was mentally prepared to be a war-time president at 12:02 on January 20th.)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll grant that potentially the Obama team is only going to use these until they get white house addresses and then move all the emails they sent or received into their new accounts, which is the right thing to do. However, there is no guarantee that they would have if this wasn't being reported, or that they will even now.
You can choose to believe that Obama is some how different from every other politician in washington if you so choose, but it is pure ignorance to assume that EVERYONE in his administration, from Cabinet members to secretary's for the secretary's secretary are just as noble.
Re:This is not the same thing as Palin's situation (Score:2, Insightful)
And only if they do not willingly archive said emails.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
They want it both ways. They want secure email to block spies, but also want it to be stored someplace for later usage in a trial against the president. With a webmail account, they have neither.
Re:Why would Bush have anything to hide? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you were taking over my job, I'd gladly give you the passwords to my work computer.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
They ANNOUNCED the fucking addresses. OF COURSE they knew it would be reported.
The Bush staff had government accounts and chose to use RNC ones specifically to avoid oversight. And they did it for YEARS.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Maybe they did it because they thought the records wouldn't be disclosed," said Fuchs. "That raises issues possible destruction of evidence issues - if they expected litigation."
And how exactly does this apply to TEMPORARY e-mail addresses used for a day until they got their WhiteHouse accounts working? Hmmm?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
You do know that the Washington Times [wikipedia.org] is a Moonie newspaper, right?
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, isn't a majority endorsing the Democrat position an accurate reflection of opinion in the USA as a whole?
There is a world of difference between being, or endorsing a Democrat, and willingly letting one side slide for doing the same thing you slam the opponents for.
As I said in my post, I'm a Republican and I was furious with the Bush Administration for hiding official communications behind RNC email address. Regardless of you party affiliation, you should have certain lines that divide "ok" from "not ok" and they should apply equally to everyone. Obviously there is room for grey area and interpretation. the previous administration hid the fact that they were using outside email addresses while the current administration is apparently announcing it. that implies that they have more noble intentions, but is not a guarantee.
I'm not even saying that I believe the current administration will abuse these google accounts. I don't, but I found it a little repellent that the current administration doing something eerily similar to something that gave the last administration a black eye is considered "funny" here on slashdot, instead of mildly unsettling at the very least.