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."
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree, but I can see a scenario someday whereby someone files a Freedom of Information Act request to Google. Must they comply?
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Please Stop All the Obama Stories (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
That thing that just went over your head... (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, asking a legitimate question is "grilling". So much for transparency and a new tone.
Did you stop at that part of the article? You probably should have read on to the point where Obama explained that he would be answering questions later on that day. The purpose of the surprise visit was just to say hello, hence the comment of "I came down to visit, not to answer questions, I'll do that later on."
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Interesting)
You can always track [politifact.com] his campaign promises. As of right now, 7 are kept, 1 stalled, 14 in the works, and no status on 488. Not a bad start after 3 days.
Holy shit, did you take a look at the promise that was stalled? It reads, "During 2009 and 2010, existing businesses will receive a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each additional full-time employee hired."
This is a bit of a conspiracy theory, but...companies like Microsoft and IBM who actually reported quarterly profits (not losses), but didn't meet expectations. You think they might be exaggerating their condition and going with mass layoffs in anticipation of that tax credit? They would get to hire in large numbers to get their workforce back up to normal levels and reign in a huge tax credit.
Re:This is not the same thing as Palin's situation (Score:2, Interesting)
According to the guy who broke into her account and read every single email, there was nothing interesting there.
But, I'm sure you have information that he didn't...
What the HELL. (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this a cleverly crafted example of word salad, or is it a Google translation?
Chicago Machine vs Obama... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:How long? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's also nothing to prevent me from using wh.whatever@gmail.com and sending fake orders out.
This is something I'm not really clear on, even after reading the Washington Times piece. Is the staff really using the GMail accounts for all of their normal work-related communications, or were the accounts just created for the general public to send stuff to, which will then be forwarded to the regular accounts when they come online? The piece even explicitly says that official press releases will not be sent from any GMail accounts, which leads me to believe that the accounts are "receive-only".
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:1, Interesting)
"I think you know the answer to that."