More Silly Restrictions Will Limit Team Obama's Ability To Communicate
from the don't-let-the-lawyers-govern dept
While there are some indications that newly inaugurated President Obama is going to be able to keep his Blackberry (or some other device) to communicate with the outside world, similar "restrictions" are being used to curtail his staff's ability to communicate. Specifically, staffers have been told they have to give up instant messaging. The reasoning, once again, comes down to the lawyers, and that records need to be kept of all written communications in the White House, according to the Presidential Records Act. However, it's seriously (and reasonably) pissing off Obama staffers who have come to rely on IM as a very efficient way to communicate and get stuff done.It's really sad when efficiency is getting stifled by lawyers, though it happens all too often. Why not just make it clear to staffers to consider the fact that everything they instant message may be seen on CNN the next day, and tell them it's their responsibility to use the tools effectively? This is the federal gov't we're talking about. Why are they being treated like grade school kids? The purpose of the Presidential Records Act is to increase transparency in government. But, like so many unintended consequences of regulations, it's doing the opposite. It's driving people to use less efficient and less useful tools of communication to decrease transparency.
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Filed Under: communication, instant messaging, obama, regulations, unintended consequences
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Lawyers
"If all the Doctors died tomorrow, it would be a disaster.
If all the lawyers died tomorrow... meh, whatever."
I'm not advocating all lawyers need to die, just saying, it's not like the world would be hurting if they were gone.
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Re: Lawyers
A good start..
What is 1,000,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A fuckin great start..
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Re: Re: Lawyers
Professional courtesy.
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Written Communications
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Re: Written Communications
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Re: Re: Written Communications
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Re: Written Communications
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Re: Written Communications
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Re: Re: Written Communications
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Re: Written Communications
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Re:
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ffs this is getting rediculous
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Re: ffs this is getting rediculous
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I haven't used a stand alone messenger like AIM or MSN in a long time, but every multiple account manager (such as Pidgin) has some kind of log manager.
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Re:
No, the issue is NOT the technical issue. It's easy to keep logs.
The issue is the lawyer issue: what's in those logs will become public, and they don't want that.
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Not that hard
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Huh?
Puhhh-leeeeze.
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Re: Huh?
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Re: Huh?
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it'd be the same damn thing as talking over IM, except with IM i can turn on logging to save all my conversations
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Crypto
Also, if you're worried about ISP's or anyone else seeing your IM conversations you should setup some PTP encryption such as OTR with Pidgin.
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Re: Crypto
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Microsoft Communicator anyone?
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Why so secretive?
Sample chat log:
RAHMBO: yo. u there?
BIG O: Yes. What's up?
RAHMBO: blago wants a pardon
BIG O: lulz
RAHMBO: i know. told him it'll be jan 19, 2013 at earliest
BIG O: If he's lucky, that is. Why would I need to hush him up when I'm done. I'm untouchable.
RAHMBO: tru dat. u = da man
Yeah, we wouldn't want to know that those sorts of shenanigans are going on, now would we? :-
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Re: Why so secretive?
Perhaps this was because all conversation was filtered through the advisor's eyes. There's a book that details some of these issues by Scott McClellan that is far more entertaining than your sample chat log.
You have a president that appears to have an incredible desire to lead based on the best information, which would be more than just the rosy-colored stuff. To simply, and jokingly say it's going to be used for personal things is seriously misguided, and I doubt you see the value in said communications technology yourself.
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Re: Re: Why so secretive?
What the Obama disciples are refusing to understand is that they are supporting allowing secret communications of our government in order to run their criminal enterprises, but they're for it because it's THEIR GUYS keeping the secrets.
Case in point, the so-called "politicization of the Justice Dept." - Clinton fired EVERY SINGLE LAST ATTORNEY, including those poking into his criminal activities and the Left sat in silence or pointed out attys serve at the Prez's pleasure. Dubya sacked EIGHT lawyers and you'd think he'd declared himself Emperor.
What's to prevent Obama and his minions from plotting the unemployment of Patrick Fitzgerald because this modern-day Elliot Ness is turning over too many rocks in Chicago; rocks which hide cronies and co-conspirators to Obama & Co.? Why are Obama's acolytes so eager to give him communications options they'd swoon to their fainting couches if Dubya requested?
The only efficiencies being impacted are the Obama cabal's ability to run their Kremlin-style operations. Boo-friggedy-hoo. Turn in the Blackberry, Barry.
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Re: Re: Re: Why so secretive?
So what's your alternative?
The way I see it, become forced to exclusively meet with people to gain any type of insight. These meetings are usually undocumented, but it benefits the lobby. But in the process, your administration becomes For, By, and Of the Lobbists.
I have to admit, I enjoyed the clever slip-in of "Kremlin-style" operations and Emperorism.
Stay classy.
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Re: Re: Re: Why so secretive?
2. Clinton fired all the US attorneys when he took office and appointed new ones, as is customary. They then served out their terms. Bush fired certain US attorneys in the middle of their terms, for apparently political reasons.
3. Who exactly is "supporting allowing secret communications of our government in order to run their criminal enterprises"?
"Why are Obama's acolytes so eager to give him communications options they'd swoon to their fainting couches if Dubya requested?"
What are you talking about? You think people would be upset because Bush would have been able to have secret communications? And what was he actually doing, spray painting messages on the outside of the White House? Anything he wanted kept secret was kept secret, IM would only have made it more likely to get leaks, not less.
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Re: Why so secretive?
Um. Try a little reading comprehension next time. My issue isn't with them keeping things a secret. It's the opposite.
The REASON they can't use IM is BECAUSE the lawyers are worried that the info would need to be made public. I'd have no problem with them logging the data and making it public. I'm not saying they should have secret channels, but by not letting them use IM it ENCOURAGES secret channels.
Try reading next time.
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In the interest of full disclosure, I am a lawyer and business owner. I can tell you what business owners everywhere know, that you cannot let inside or outside counsel make policy (they just tell you the risk of your decisions, they don't make the decisions).
I mean, is Obama the most powerful man in the world or not?!? I'm sure there is a tech way to save IMs (I mean, mine are archived on my computer pretty easily) -- I know that there needs to be extra security etc. but I'm sure that's possible. Who are these people?
~ Elizabeth
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excuses
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It's the law
http://www.archives.gov/
Those lawyers everyone's bitching about? They're not all lawyers, and we call them 'Senators' and 'Representatives'. Even given that, Securities firms and Brokerages have pretty strict retention requirements, and they manage to use IM and email...
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Don't Forget Phone Surveilance
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Re: Don't Forget Phone Surveilance
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Watergate and audit trails
The real problem with instant messaging is that it is not secure and the audit trail is horrible to non-existent. (One can only imagine the hoops that RIM had to jump through and the concessions and promises they made to Obama's team so that Obama could keep his BlackBerry - I bet Obama's emails do not get routed through Canada - there is probably a big RIM server sitting in Langley right now.)
Email generally has a problem with organizing and archiving emails. There does not appear to be any email program available which adequately logs incoming and outgoing email in a way which can be sensibly retrieved in the event of litigation.
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SO LOG THE DAMN IM CHATS
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Re: SO LOG THE DAMN IM CHATS
I think you're missing the point. They know they can log the chats. The reason they don't want to do this is because they DON'T WANT the chats logged. They're afraid people will say something they'll later regret.
It's not a tech problem. It's a bunch of worried lawyers afraid of what people will say.
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Re: Re: SO LOG THE DAMN IM CHATS
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IM Logging?
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IM Logging?
What's the Problem?
Goverment Incompetant BS?
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It's not just the whitehouse
Can anyone come up with a logical business reason to make a communication tool more difficult to use or less useful (for internal communications)? Now shift to politics (higher education systems are highly political entities to work within) and there can be lots of reasons for not wanting IM's to be 'officially' recorded or logged.
By making all records only available in 3rd party systems (users can and still do copy/paste into Word or other text editors to print/save various conversations) they have basically removed any validity from anything that could have been said via IM (they can now deny things were said via IM, since there is no official record).
On a smaller scale our IT department made the same decision as the Whitehouse, they don't want to allow IM's to be 'official' records, but they can't just stop people from using them, so they neuter the tools and make it more difficult for users to communicate and perform their basic daily tasks. If someone IM's info to another individual and they want a printed copy, it takes them another minute or two to get it, so while they haven't stopped the behavior, they have made it much easier to deny the validity of any 'copies' of IM conversations (which are arguably one of the easiest types of communications to 'mock up' and print out).
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Point is, most intelligence comes from 2 words out of every 1000, and the media feeds on those two words. Seriously. They want to push forward that which has an emotional value. Just look at the whole Dr.Biden/Oprah interview.
Seems there's a lot of Microsoft people here. Perhaps you should perform due diligence and ping your Microsoft HR rep to determine the number employees and even 2nd hand help who have been let go which have IM messages, email, or the like as their disposition before offering up your asinine recommendations.
To those external, you may be surprised why even Microsoft can't keep their highest performing employees. They are afraid, internally, of rocking the boat, and any idea which would challenge them to be a better performing company. I've learned a LOT from the MiniMicrosoft blog, and maybe you should take your own medicine for once. Microsoft will only grow if it brings new technology or ideas in as part of the process.
I wonder what Microsoft's employee and contractor retention rate is. It's never been published, has it?
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Point is, most intelligence comes from 2 words out of every 1000, and the media feeds on those two words. Seriously. They want to push forward that which has an emotional value. Just look at the whole Dr.Biden/Oprah interview.
Seems there's a lot of Microsoft people here. Perhaps you should perform due diligence and ping your Microsoft HR rep to determine the number employees and even 2nd hand help that been let go due to IM messages, email, or the like.
Consider this before offering up your asinine recommendations.
To those external, you may be surprised why even Microsoft can't keep their highest performing employees. They are afraid, internally, of rocking the boat, and any idea which would challenge them to be a better performing company. I've learned a LOT from the MiniMicrosoft blog, and maybe you should take your own medicine for once. Microsoft will only grow if it brings new technology or ideas in as part of the process, and this includes discourse.
I wonder what Microsoft's employee and contractor retention rate is. It's never been published, has it?
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Many Are Missing the Point...
Information can be recorded and IM can be a rather "loose" form of conversation. There's probably more concern of information being retained on the client side, not the server side. That information could, either, get into the wrong hands or be turned to look horribly bad in the hands of someone disgruntled.
Part of the problem is that too many people are still way too stupid with technology. I'll even throw in that I think that if Obama gets his way we'll have our first mammoth government leak by way of technology.
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jabber server
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IM recordings
I think that a combination of having the IM conversations recorded as well as encrypted (sent/received as well as on the hard drive/server) should be done. This would allow the technology to be used. Of course most lawyers have no idea about the things the write and as a result we get these stupid restrictions put on laws that are valid and needed.
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