Transparency: White House collecting Facebook and other web data without notifing users

Most transparent administration ever? Now, according to the Washington Times, The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, etc without notifying or asking the consent of the site users. More from the article:

Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information.

“The White House has not been adequately transparent, particularly on how it makes use of new social media techniques, such as this example,” he said.

Defenders of the White House actions said the Presidential Records Act requires that the administration gather the information and that it was justified in taking the additional step of asking a private contractor to “crawl and archive” all such material. Nicholas Shapiro, a White House spokesman, declined to say when the practice began or how much the new contract would cost.

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September 16, 2009 · Filed Under General Politics


Comments

  • Sue

    Today I posted some comments on my Facebook that are critical of health reform. I think everyone who has comments against any part of federal gov’t should do the same. White House would maybe then realize the extent of discontent with its policies. Yeah…I’ll be one of the first arrested and sent to political prison.