by the Left Coast Rebel
The first privacy infringement was the spam email flap from David Axelrod. The second, the infamous 'Fishy' informant WH request. Is the Obamanation White House doing an end-around privacy laws again? Via Memorandum, a group called the National Legal and Policy Center has uncovered what seems to be another fishy request from the White House.
NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.
The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”
Apparently NLPC was alerted to the plan via a 51 page solicitation of bids to execute the above job duties. Click here to view the solicitation.
Troubling issues listed at NLPC include -
- extremely broad secrecy terms preventing the vendor from disclosing to the public or the media what information is being captured and archived (page 7, “Restriction Against Disclosure”)
- wholesale capturing of comments by non-White House staff on publicly accessible sites
- capturing of comments by both Obama critics and supporters, with no restriction as to how the White House would use the information
And many more, click here for the list at NLPC. As this is a breaking story, I will update as necessary. Certainly given this White House's record, something is fishy about this.
LCR:
ReplyDeleteThe government already looks at all data and voice transmissions that go over the public networks. AT&T, Qwest, and Verizon have dedicated whole floors of their regional headquarters in majors cities where traffic gets routed to government network equipment that stores the data, sniffs it and then routes it to a listening station for further analysis. Basically, the main trunks are mirrored into the rooms so the data can be analyzed. What the telcos got for their cooperation was a bill that absolves them from spying, You can't sue a telco for invasion of privacy. Unless your connections and conversations are encrypted (and all that does is delay the inevitable), they see and hear everything.
Now, you have to watch and see what bone the congress will throw these social networking sites so as to allow it. Look at Google and their relationship with China. Basically, a lot of us that have blogs and are against his majesty probably have a folder somewhere. It's going to get worse.
@ Rightguy - I wish that I could disagree but I fear you are correct. Scary stuff, when will Americans wake up?
ReplyDeleteIt's the boiled frog analogy. Put the frog in the pot and then turn the heat on, and it will go to sleep and get cooked by the gradual heat. Try to toss a frog in boiling water and hell will ensue. They know that. Incrementalism is the way to go. In my father's day when a natural disaster happened, people would shun help from the government. Now they expect it. FDR changed everything. He changed our expectations. What did Gerald Ford say (and it was Ford, not Jefferson)? "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have".
ReplyDeleteThere goes my chance to run for Congress. When the nonsense that my brother-in-law posted on my Facebook page gets combined with a few "questionable" websites I may have clicked to in my day are held up in front of my face with a threat to take it all public if I don't go away quietly...well, I will just have to hope that my wife and my mother don't pay attention to the evening news.
ReplyDelete@ Right guy - Great points, I'll try to use the 'boiled frog' analogy in the future, it applies to a lot we are seeing today..
ReplyDelete@ Zane - Me too, can you imagine all of my rantings being held up, (from my blog)?
Holy Cow, if it's not one thing it's two others. I've been expecting this. So I'm gonna post this on my blog too! See why I call Obuma a monster? Well, just remember many of us are praying that someone inside will 'take care of things'. All these people have to eat and breathe like the rest of us ... God will not be mocked and He will protect His own as long as we keep fighting the evil. I have faith.
ReplyDelete