So Now He Wants to Monitor Social Networking Sites

[Waitone]

Just  one more indicator that we have a problem in fed.gov.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108696

<snip>
The White House is hiring a contractor to harvest information about Americans from its pages on social networking websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

The National Legal and Policy Center, or NLPC, revealed the White House New Media team is seeking to hire a technology vendor to collect data such as comments, tag lines, e-mail, audio and video from any place where the White House "maintains a presence" – for a period of up to eight years.

"The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP (Executive Office of the President) on publicly-accessible web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA (Presidential Records Act) maintains a presence," the posting states.
</snip>

[Silver Bullet]

Big Bro', 25 years late.

[MicroBalrog]

I'm not a big fan of President Obama, but... what's the problem here? You post stuff in public, people can see it. It's not like they're going to be hacking personal data.

[FTA84]

I don't know, but if I recall correctly, the executive branch's job was to execute the law as written by the congress and approved by the President.  The veto power was given as a check on the power of congress, not congress as a check on the president (which it is now).

It seems their job of the white house has shifted, from executing the law, to cheer leading the legislative process, witch-hunting, and opposing any view point that it disagrees with.

When the white house mass e-mails arguments for health care, unsolicited, which law are they executing?

[Rudy Kohn]

It seems to me like the knowledge that your posts, if they are deemed interesting by a government-contracted panel, could be archived and your name put on a list or in a database might have a chilling effect on free speech, even if those databases and lists are never used for bad purposes.

Of course, posting things in public always carries this risk, but knowing that the gov't is setting up a special group to do just this is kind of creepy.  What are they looking for?  What will happen to the data they mine?

It kind of feels too personal at that point.  The White House's apparent attitude toward dissent doesn't make it any better.

[Standing Wolf]

Had George W. Bush done such a repressive, anti-democratic, fascist thing, the leftist extremists would have raised a howl heard all the way to Wyoming.

Somewhere far beyond the grave, Lenin is laughing himself silly.

[Boomhauer]

I'm not a big fan of President Obama, but... what's the problem here? You post stuff in public, people can see it. It's not like they're going to be hacking personal data.

What could possibly be the point other than to begin gathering names of political dissidents?

Frog in a pot of water slowly coming to a boil...

[MagnumDweeb]

+Avenger29

Bad enough so many of the liberals and lefties are piss themselvse cowards, now they want to monitor everything that is said, not to prevent terrorist attacks or supress violent action...but a rather vague and nebulous intent of control over the information accessible to all of the public. This does not bode well in my opinion, how much Stalin must be salivating in lustful envy at Obama's actions and sheepish maneuvers. I only take comfort in the fact that society would sooner collapse then risk being taken over by fascists. And so then we could step back and evaluate this grand little experiment of the U.S. Sorry to be cynical but this is where my head is at.

[Balog]

I think a good question to ask is what they intend to do with this information. There is no moral or ethical purpose I can see that would require fed.gov to keep track of who's complaining about Obama on Facebook.

[Boomhauer]

I think a good question to ask is what they intend to do with this information. There is no moral or ethical purpose I can see that would require fed.gov to keep track of who's complaining about Obama on Facebook.

There's not.

The leftists are well aware of how the nature of the internet provides excellent free speech capabilities, and they want it shut down. They are well aware of the difficulties caused both during the election and during Obama's administration by those on the internet.

Shut the internet down, and free speech essentially DIES. The mainstream media will be happy to provide the "official" news. Talk radio will be dealt with one way or another, and those annoying grassroots protests at the local level can be ignored.

The internet is the last frontier of true free speech.

[ronnyreagan]

Unless I'm misreading this, it doesn't appear to be monitoring or scanning so much as archiving, and the scope seems to be limited to what people are writing to the white house, not anything and everything written about the white house.

It says the contractor will need to provide "both comments posted on pages created by the EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those websites." So if you don't want your comment/message archived you simply don't send it to the White House. You can write whatever you want on your own page and it won't be archived. This seems within reason, especially if they're attempting to comply with the Presidential Records Act.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Unless I'm misreading this, it doesn't appear to be monitoring or scanning so much as archiving, and the scope seems to be limited to what people are writing to the white house, not anything and everything written about the white house.

It says the contractor will need to provide "both comments posted on pages created by the EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those websites." So if you don't want your comment/message archived you simply don't send it to the White House. You can write whatever you want on your own page and it won't be archived. This seems within reason, especially if they're attempting to comply with the Presidential Records Act.

I note that you've ignore part of the authorization.

[ronnyreagan]

I note that you've ignore part of the authorization.

Being a bit more specific would be helpful.

[Balog]

Being a bit more specific would be helpful.

Reading is fundamental.

along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA (Presidential Records Act) maintains a presence," the posting states.

[AZRedhawk44]

So if an EOP member is also a member of APS, they would archive all posts on APS that touch on Obama's administration.

"Maintaining a presence" could also mean a simple bot account that logs in and logs out of a given web site, such as APS.

[ronnyreagan]

Reading is fundamental.

Ok, but that part doesn't change anything.
The part I quoted is specifying what information is included in the part you quoted and that information is limited to items posted to the EOP members page or messages sent to them.

It's saying "You need to provide X information. X shall include y and z."  It's not asking for anything beyond the messages sent to them.

This is even an answered question in the RFQ:
9. The Presidential Records Act does not require the storage or archiving of non-EOP content, as such is there a specific reason as to why the content provided on EOP related websites in the form of comments is included in these archiving procedures?
Answer: The PRA includes in its definition of presidential records content ―received by PRA components and personnel. Out of an abundance of caution, we are treating comments made by non-PRA personnel on sites on which a PRA component has a presence as presidential records, requiring them to be captured or sampled.