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.
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously though, I found this to be perhaps the least interesting
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Funny)
No I haven't, is it pants?
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]
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:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Funny)
How is this funny? It's more informative. It's highlighting the doublestandard that exists on this site for Bush v. Obama, or more generally Republicans v. Democrats.
Look at the article -- the Republicans use Yahoo!, the Democrats use Google. Of course /. comes out in favour of the Democrats when there's such a clear and significant issue dividing them!
By the way, isn't a majority endorsing the Democrat position an accurate reflection of opinion in the USA as a whole? Maybe they should put it to a vote or something to find out.
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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. t
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:4, Informative)
The Bush staff had government accounts and chose to use RNC ones specifically to avoid oversight. And they did it for YEARS
did you skip this line when reading my post?
As a Republican I was just as upset about the Bush administration trying to hide official communications behind RNC email addresses, as the rest of the people on this site.
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did you skip this line when reading my post?
No. But you seemed to be saying that the day or two some Obama staff were using webmail, openly, because that had no official accounts yet, was comparable to the years that Bush staff covertly used non .gov accounts.
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Re:Am I missing something? (Score:4, Informative)
I donno, seems like the real story is how backwards the whitehouse is technologically. A few quotes from the Washington Post story:
"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.
And:
The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.
And finally...
Another White House official whose transition cellphone was disconnected left a message temporarily referring callers to his wife's phone.
Several people tried to route their e-mails through personal accounts.
But there were no missing letters from the computer keyboards, as Bush officials had complained of during their transition in 2001.
And officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.
This doesn't seem to have much to do with trying to circumvent any sort of records keeping, but rather a way to function for a few days while a #&$%@# up system is worked out.
Though I admit, I would be more suspicious of the last president doing this then the current one, but I suspect with the last guy we wouldn't have heard about for 3 years until a whistle blower leaked it.
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"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?
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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:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm hoping that was irony, but on Slashdot, I know it probably wasn't. Sigh.
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: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."
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>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
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You do know that the Washington Times [wikipedia.org] is a Moonie newspaper, right?
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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, Informative)
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.
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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 i
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Is this a cleverly crafted example of word salad, or is it a Google translation?
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oh my god will_die please stop, reading your posts is causing a headache of extreme nature that you must understand. first i thought you were posting this way on purpose as some kind of inverse meta-meta-irony to another poster but now i see it is your style and it hurts. You do see what it is that is wrong with your posts and are doing it on purpose correct? There is considerable risk of damage to the space time continuum if you persist.
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Why should I trust politifact.com? They can't even add! (7+1+14+488=500? Not when I went to school!)
Apparently, you missed the meaning of the word "about" in school too.
"PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made..."
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..
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.
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I think the promise of transparency is one that needs to be watched very closely.
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:Am I missing something? (Score:5, Funny)
Slashdot.... where naivete meets rampant paranoia and cynicism.
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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.
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"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..
The difference was that Bush always did the exact opposite of what he said, but this Obama puts his presidential powers where his mouth is:
PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDA [whitehouse.gov]
January 21, 2009
* Freedom of Information Act
* Pay Freeze
* Transparency and Open Government
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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
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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."
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.
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Also, none of them is likely to be using the password "popcorn". They use the more secure p0pc0rn, instead.
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This is clearly a double standard applied because they are Democrats.
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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 h
Re:Parent is troll (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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It doesn't matter if you are accused of something if the accusation is not credible.
So you don't think there are any missing emails, despite the millions found after Bush and Co. said there were no missing emails?
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So, someone presents a rational argument, and it's mocked because they're defending Palin? Nice. Maybe you think his facts are BS. That's fair. Attack his facts, provide a reputable source of evidence that things are not as he claims they are.
If things are as he says they are (and I have no idea if that's the case), his statement is very reasonable. If you refuse to counter his statement with fact, then you're just spouting partisan drivel.
story? (Score:2)
whats with every single article on slashdot being tagged with "story" even this??
How long? (Score:2)
I think it takes 3 minutes to create an account, including exchange.
How long does it take in the head office of the USA?
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:How long? (Score:5, Informative)
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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".
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.
wh.azzup@gmail.com? (Score:5, Funny)
Can anyone confirm that Mr. Azzup is a staffer? :o)
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Yeah, but he's busy watching the game, having a Bud.
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.
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http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin_Yahoo_inbox_2008 [wikileaks.org]
and
as long as they archive it, there's no problem (Score:3, Funny)
The problem with Palin's Yahoo use is that it was secret, for one, and second that the emails involved govt. business but weren't recorded anywhere. So, as long as the mails sent and received using Gmail are subsequently archived somewhere, there's no problem. Whether they will be? Who knows.
Who really cares? (Score:3)
I argue, again, that Obama, as does any President, has the right to set up a communications infrastructure that is private and unrecordable. But, even if we put that issue aside, how far up on the priority list is this issue, versus this list.
a) jobs
b) budget deficit
c) looming entitlements meltdown
d) not one, but two wars
e) aligning tax rates and health care with NATO allies
f) trade imbalances with asia
just to throw a couple out there.
If we're going to be political, can we talk about something important?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I agree - these Obama stories are pretty stupid. I'm proposing the tag 'obamagasm' for stories like this in the future.
Next we are going to find out (Score:2)
they are using google docs for collaboration...
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?
How the US works, federal and state. (Score:3, Informative)
Palin is the governor of the STATE of Alaska who ran for a FEDERAL position. During the time she ran for the federal position she was still the state governor and did work as the state governor. She did state and political party work on a Yahoo account.
If she had been elected as Vice-President or had been working for the White House work related documents on Yahoo would of been illegal but she was not and was doing state related work and so far no-one has pointed to an Alaskan law saying she could not do it.
Not that this should be a shock, she had many claims put against her that were correct and permitted under Alaska law but members of the opposition political party figured they would use to attack her.
Now in the USA federal and state laws are separate and while many federal laws must be followed by the states, the laws that the article are complaining that governor Palin did not follow do not deal with the states.
Breaking the Law (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, so we have staffers using non-government email to conduct government business? There is at least one law on the books about archiving WH emails for various purposes. That they are relying on external systems at all for that purpose seems like a clear violation. Whether Palin did it or not does not justify the new WH staff violating the law. "He committed murder, so I can commit murder, too."
That they are using a rationalization means they know they are violating something. But now, they have established a shadow infrastructure that allows them to continue to carry on government business outside government channels. Nothing prevents them from continuing to use this shadow infrastructure after they have legitimate accounts.
I would have thought that most of these accounts could have been created during the transition. It's not like the previous transition, where members of the outgoing administration ripped the letter 'W' off the keyboards and slipped porn into the paper in printers and copiers. If the prior administration here caused any significant delay, you can bet your bippy the press would have informed by the incoming administration.
My point is 1) that the delay is probably a ruse, or at best a minor inconvenience and 2) the new administration has established a way to violate federal law.
Maybe we should all set up gmail accounts with WH....
Re:politicians != understand IT security (Score:5, Funny)
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...
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Really? why the hell do companies bother to put mail servers behind firewalls then... oh year because after transit you have the content sitting on the server. You do understand that having any data (mail, file, db) sit on a third parties equipment is pretty damn irresponsible, especially a third party whos TOS says:
"You acknowledge and agree that Subsidiaries and Affiliates will be entitled to provide the Services to you."
"you acknowledge and agree that Google may stop (permanently or temporarily) providin
Re:That thing that just went over your head... (Score:5, Funny)
"I wonder what kind of ads showed up next to White House emails concerning political appointments?"
Buy SENATE SEATS Online Now! {www.blagojevich.com]
Anyone who didn't see that one coming from a million miles away deserves a shot in the balls.
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.
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Re:politicians != understand IT security (Score:5, Informative)
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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Yes, it's actually just you, because the number of dopes who think the White House doesn't have an IT staff is very small.
Now, for a little puzzle, ask yourself how long it would normally take to create hundreds of email accounts in a secured system?
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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: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.
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Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:4, Informative)
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Now, for a little puzzle, ask yourself how long it would normally take to create hundreds of email accounts in a secured system?
If the system wasn't designed by chimps, about as long as it takes to create and upload a csv.
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Re:Kind of a side note... (Score:5, Informative)
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...
Re: (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.
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:Why would Bush have anything to hide? (Score:5, Funny)
Why would Bush have anything to hide? Only criminals require privacy.
Congratulations, you've reached a level of irony we thought to be unattainable.
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If you were taking over my job, I'd gladly give you the passwords to my work computer.
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Nice. What about my post says that I didn't know that:
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 I was saying is that if there was a dedicated staff (
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Actually, there is. The White House is an institution upon itself. The security, logistics, kitchen, cleaning, groundskeeping, engineering and, yes, IT staffs work for the Government but are not administration appointees.
The problem isn't a lack of staff.
The problem is a bureaucracy. Part of this is good: institutional pushback that serves to protect the White House and Executive Branch by not being overly concerned with the state of the art.
Part of this is bad: forcing the WH to stay in a perpetual 15-year
Hello, Captain Obvious (Score:2)
...the e-mail servers, for which the White House is infamously known, seemed to be down.
Well, duh! You can't really expect a server to boot immediately after someone runs shred /dev/hda.
Re: (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 af
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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
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Really? What is your source for this claim?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Let's start here:
White House Vandalized In Transition, G.A.O. Finds
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFDE163CF931A25755C0A9649C8B63 [nytimes.com]
But if you want, you can search for "clinton white house vandalism" if you like.
To be honest, I thought every one knew that transitions of the White House between parties were filled with this stuff.
Is the Bush staff playing dirty pool with the Obama staff? Probably, but its more of a tradition than an isolated Bush is Evil incident.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
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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.
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I wonder what context-sensitive ads they were seeing?
"Extreme Rendition? Come enjoy all EXTREME sports at Vale."
"Global Thermonuclear War? Get WARGAMES on DVD for $1.99 at Overstock.com"
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Google's free Gmail accounts to work around the fact that their transition emails will go dark at 11 a.m. Tuesday, at least an hour before they will have access to their new government accounts.
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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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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?
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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 eliti
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Typically when a Dem gets into hot water, it also has a half dozen strippers in it.
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I really wish I spoke murloc [wowwiki.com]. I'm really curious what you just said that got you modded Interesting.
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Once you start using an email address it is with you forever unless you're willing to dump all of your contacts.
Gmail has supported forwarding mail and exporting contacts for as long as I can remember.