Black-Buried!

[bigshotprof]

Obama has to cough up his blackberry, because using it violates some of the open info statutes. Not since Bill Clinton had to disable the hootchie app on his iPhone has this issue been as salient. Here is the question: Shouldn't some areas of a President's communication existence be off-limits? If so, what should the limits be? "There is nothing to Twitter but tweets themselves."

[rabidbadger]

Huh? Linky?

[tokenuser]

Something about presidential communications being subject to archiving.

Bush stopped sending eMail cold turkey 8 years ago. I wonder if his old AOL account is sill available.

Clinton also stopped using email when he was in office.

I suspect Obama will have a harder time of it because he is a Crackberry addict. Blackberry is king in DC, so secure communication isn't an issue. eMail can be archived via a BES server.

I suspect he will keep using eMail. Strikes me as someone that will want transparency in his administration - and that includes communication.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27740220/

[skyz]

Something about presidential communications being subject to archiving.

Bush stopped sending eMail cold turkey 8 years ago. I wonder if his old AOL account is sill available.

Clinton also stopped using email when he was in office.

I suspect Obama will have a harder time of it because he is a Crackberry addict. Blackberry is king in DC, so secure communication isn't an issue. eMail can be archived via a BES server.

I suspect he will keep using eMail. Strikes me as someone that will want transparency in his administration - and that includes communication.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27740220/

'he hopes to have a laptop in the oval office'

just try and separate me from my laptop......

poor guy it is like he is 'on restriction'

[tokenuser]

Why no laptop in the oval office? That makes no sense. There isn't already one?Nope. GWB has people do that for him.

[comhcinc]

i am sure he will keep his blackbarry and have a laptop put in. they just have to figure out how to do it within the law(which i think token did early)

[rabidbadger]

DUDES. The man ran, won, and lives on the internet. Prez want's internet, then Prez gets internet. Let IT deal with the rest. GEEZE!

[xibalba]

i am sure he will keep his blackbarry and have a laptop put in. they just have to figure out how to do it within the law(which i think token did early)

I heard someone say they don't want him having the blackberry due to that it might be trackable and they don't want that.

[rabidbadger]

I heard someone say they don't want him having the blackberry due to that it might be trackable and they don't want that.

That was my first thought, too. Maybe they could have "decoy" BB's or something. Like I said, It's an IT issue, not a prez one.

[owlboy]

Shouldn't some areas of a President's communication existence be off-limits?

Nope.

[rabidbadger]

Nope.

agree. and how did you get away with such a short post, ;)

[owlboy]

Four letter word and the period counts as a character

[xibalba]

Hmmm I guess the president has not privacy when it comes to things like that?

[rabidbadger]

Hmmm I guess the president has not privacy when it comes to things like that?

with modern tech, I'm sure the Whitehouse IT dept can keep his private stuff seperate from official transparent gov stufff. Might take a while. But It can be done.

[speed]

Nope.

While I agree in theory, I see some major flaws... For starters, if he has to make some kind of communication that is confidential for national security reasons (there are legitimate national security reasons), should that not be classified? Same with something that may contain personal information? As well, do we really need to know what Barack is having for supper or what grades his kids are getting in school? (Unless they decide to run for President)

Also, a bit off topic, but it kinda fits in. I was listening to TWiT last night and I heard Patrick vehemently oppose Obama using stuff such as Twitter, saying that he has better things to do than waste his time playing around with the social network of the week. It made me wonder: do Americans really expect their President to have zero down time? The way Patrick made it sound, he expected Obama do do nothing but eat, sleep and sit in the Oval Office. I agree that official policy shouldn't be that he will try to be accessible on all social networking mediums, but if he feels it's a good way to stay transparent (or even just an entertaining way to mess around), shouldn't we welcome him providing updates on additional networks such as Twitter? (Although, I still doubt that the person who poked me on Facebook really was Obama...)

[alaskalonewolf]

I personally believe the one person who has no right to privacy
is the President. That's why it's called "Public" Office. His job is
to represented the collective opinions of the entire nation, act
in our best interest, and to always defend the constitution of
the United States of America. See also: USC article II section I.

His personal bias, opinions, intentions, doubts, irrational or logical
beliefs, political alliances, friends and family are ALL under the
microscope, and remain there, until such time as he/or she no longer
remains at this station in the highest executive office in the world.
His cellphone is fair game, although defended from revealing sensitive
information which may conflict with the interests of national security.

President Bush used "terrorism" and "terrorists" as the leeway, the
blanket excuse, the blank check, an 'easy button' of sorts, to take
our freedoms and suspend our rights. He enacted 'heat of passion'
legislation and executive orders which ran contrary to the will of the
people of the United States, claiming that it was in our best interests.
Re-acting out of fear and ignorance is no way to lead the greatest
nation on planet Earth. That's why we need to know, exactly, what's
going on, at all times, so that we can keep history from repeating itself.
Remember people, the President is the chief executive officer, and we,
collectively, are the only real boss... As my employee, that I personally hired,
I demand to know what this person is doing, while working the most important job.

[speed]

I personally believe the one person who has no right to privacy
is the President. That's why it's called "Public" Office.

While I agree in spirit, there are limitations. He may be your "employee", but there are still some basic things, such as SSN, route of motorcade, etc. that are confidential for a reason.

And also, there are something that I just don't care about, and it's pointless to document. Perhaps they should log all his Blackberry usage and then just redact email addresses (not names, but just the peoples personal emails and phone numbers, so they don't get spammed, because people *cough*Digg users*cough* would end up using stuff like that for nefarious reasons.

[alaskalonewolf]

I know what you mean. I agree...
we should really be watching out
for those nefarious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefarious_(Spoon)) [Digg] robots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCmok5i4uhk

[speed]

I know what you mean. I agree...
we should really be watching out
for those nefarious (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefarious_(Spoon)) [Digg] robots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCmok5i4uhk

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=nefarious

[ariastar]

I like to think that the person who's supposed smart enough to run the country can be smart enough to know when to use a personal device and when to use a government-secured device, and the risks and pros and cons of each.

I do like that one thing he's concerned about is getting outside information from more than a handful of people so that he can keep in touch with actual typical Americans rather than filtered typical Americans.

[rabidbadger]

Yeah, Aria, everything you said was the same thing I was thinking.

[alaskalonewolf]

I think we ought to be keeping a closer eye on our politicians.
There's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much money floating around these days.
And I pay taxes for a reason, just like I pay my bills, and I expect the
lights to stay "on" if you know what I mean... I am getting tired of reading
articles like:

http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/27158

[ariastar]

I think we ought to be keeping a closer eye on our politicians.
There's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much money floating around these days.
And I pay taxes for a reason, just like I pay my bills, and I expect the
lights to stay "on" if you know what I mean... I am getting tired of reading
articles like:

http://www.dailyevergreen.com/story/27158

A closer eye on some aspects, yes. But there are a few things we still shouldn't be privy to. Is it really our business is the president wants to use a personal cell phone to tell his wife he loves her? Or should his every single personal phone call be subject to monitoring?

[alaskalonewolf]

You're right. Never thought of it that way. I guess there's a balance in there somewhere. Dunno...