Breaking: Clinton Gave Staffers Clintonemail.com Addresses Too

from the it's-turtles-all-the-way-down dept

There has been quite a kerfuffle around the apparent fact that Hillary Clinton solely used her personal email account for government business. This piqued my curiosity, especially since I've been playing with a service called Conspire lately.

Conspire is a startup that analyzes your email and then seeks to provide you with an email chain with which to introduce you to the desired person. So, say I wanted to email my current business crush, Marcus Lemonis, Conspire's system found a path with which I could ask for an introduction. In my case, my friend Espree could email her friend Nathan for an introduction to Marcus. Neat. I can definitely see how Conspire could become a useful tool, albeit one that raises some very interesting privacy questions.

So, I looked for Hillary Clinton's now famous hdr22@clintonemail.com email address in Conspire. No luck. Conspire is still growing, so I suppose it makes sense that none of its members have yet to email Hillary. But then I tried just the clintonemail.com domain in the search, and got one hit. Huma Abedin, Hillary's long-time aide, had an email address with the clintonemail.com domain in Conspire's records. Unfortunately, I have no connection path to Ms. Abedin, so I can't ask the system to facilitate an introduction, but it is fascinating. What other Clinton staffers were using email addresses at the clintonemail.com domain? Seems like at least one was. To be fair, Abedin not only was Clinton's deputy chief of staff in the State Department, but she also continued to work for Clinton after Clinton left office. It is possible that she only got the email address after leaving the government, but it certainly raises some serious questions about whether or not other State Department staffers were provided private clintonemail addresses to avoid transparency requirements. In fact, Politico is reporting specifically that Abedin and other staffers used non-government email addresses while in the State Department, which suggests the clintonemail address may have come earlier:

Clinton’s personal aide, Huma Abedin, and her communications adviser, Philippe Reines, regularly used unofficial email accounts for work-related email, former colleagues said.

This also makes me wonder what other new communications mediums our government officials are using. Could world leaders be SnapChatting each other? Or perhaps sending international YO's? Or trolling each other on YikYak? And, if they are, are they complying with records retention laws?

Filed Under: clinton, clintonmail, email, foia, hillary clinton, huma abedin, transparency

'YouTube Moments' Hold Politicians Accountable

from the power-to-the-people dept

Virginia Postrel points out a great story on the way YouTube is changing the dynamics of political debate. It points out that when Bill Clinton was first running for president in 1992, the media landscape had relatively few mechanisms for holding politicians accountable for misstatements. There was only room for so many stories on the nightly news, and so when politicians told white lies, reporters tended to move on before anybody could check the claims for accuracy. But now that anyone can create a blog post or a YouTube video, politicians' fibs and gaffes can take on a life of their own, whether it's Hillary Clinton's sniper fire, Barack Obama's "bitter" Pennsylvanians, or John McCain's "100 years in Iraq." The nightly news doesn't always cover these kinds of comments when they happen, but someone in the blogosphere almost always catches them and they then get endlessly reported, debunked, and hashed out online. And once a clip has generated a lot of heat among bloggers, it can often become a big enough story that mainstream media outlets pick it up again. While some of these attacks can be nit-picky or taken out of context, on the whole it's a definite improvement in the quality of democratic debate. With video cameras everywhere and bloggers ready to pounce on any misstatement, politicians have a stronger incentive to tell the truth, and not to talk out of both sides of their mouth.

Meanwhile, USA Today reports that the presidential candidates are raising eye-popping sums of money in small increments via the Internet. In the first quarter of 2008, Barack Obama led the pack with $129 million in small donations, followed by Hillary Clinton at $65 million and John McCain at $37 million. Even John McCain's fundraising would have been considered a major accomplishment four years ago -- Howard Dean made headlines with $15 million in online donations in the third quarter of 2003, much of it from small donors. If the trend lasts -- and there are good reasons to think it will -- it will also have a democratizing effect on the political process. Presidential candidates will be more inclined to pay attention to the priorities of grassroots activists, and comparatively less worried about pleasing insiders capable of raising money in $2300 increments.

And of course, these developments are connected. The rise of blogs, YouTube, and other participatory media has gotten more people engaged and invested in the political debate, which in turn makes them more likely to open their wallets. Conversely, the fact that blog readers are often campaign contributors gives bloggers real leverage over candidates -- bloggers can punish candidates perceived as not playing fair by directing contributions to their opponents. All of which is producing a more engaged and accountable political process. Of course, things are far from perfect, but there are good reasons to think that 21st century politics will be better than politics was in the 20th century.

Filed Under: accountability, clinton, democracy, elections, mccain, obama, presidential campaigns
Companies: google, youtube

Politics Can Be Crowdsourced, Too

from the changing-politics dept

Last week, Mike noted the latest example of the trend towards people wanting to share the news, rather than just consuming it. Now that two-way communications have become cheap and easy, people (especially young people) are growing accustomed to news reporting being a two-way enterprise, with them commenting on the news and sharing it with others rather than just passively consuming it. A recent Washington Post profile of the Obama campaign's online efforts suggests that something similar is happening in politics. The Obama campaign's fundraising efforts have put to shame those of the McCain and Clinton campaigns. The Post suggests that a major reasons is that Obama's campaign has been careful to cultivate a real relationship with its supporters, rather than just treating them like walking ATM machines. It notes that Obama's emails to his supporters are less likely to ask for money and more likely to invite them to attend a campaign event, watch a video, read an article, or volunteer time for the candidate. This is politics as crowdsourcing. Just as companies can build brand loyalty by cultivating an ongoing relationship with customers, so political campaigns can spark greater levels of support by making them feel like they have a greater stake in the campaign.

A particularly interesting part of this strategy was discussed is a recent edition of Don Marti's LinuxWorld podcast with Tony Steidler-Dennison, who talked about the Obama campaign's success with phone banking. The campaign has an online phone-banking system that allowed users to log into a website, get a list of phone numbers to call, and make the calls from the comfort of their own home. This saves the campaign the hassle of having to rent out space for phone banking, but more importantly it gets more volunteers the opportunity to participate, which gives them a stronger sense that they have a stake in the campaign. The net result will be that money will become less important, while volunteer engagement and enthusiasm will become a lot more important. Thanks to the Internet, campaigns that can energize large numbers of people will find it easier and easier to harness that enthusiasm and translate it into concrete results.

Filed Under: clinton, crowdsourced, mccain, obama, politics