White House Seeks to Capture and Archive Citizens’ Comments on its Facebook, YouTube, MySpace Site

Anything you say can and will be used against you in the high court of Obamaland. What is happening here folks? You had better believe that they are watching and recording and attaching names to these comments. Hey Holder, put Mr. Smith in the terrorist file because he does not support me.

Anyone who posts comments on the White House’s Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter pages will have their statements captured and permanently archived by the federal government, according to a plan that the White House is now seeking a contractor to carry out.

The Executive Office of the President is looking for a private contractor to capture and archive comments and information posted on social networking and new media sites where the White House has established a presence. While the Presidential Records Act (PRA) generally requires that the administration preserve information generated by the president and his staff, the White House says that in seeking to collect and preserve comments made by common citizens on social networking sites it is acting “out of an abundance of caution” to comply with the law.

n mid-August, the White House put out a “request for quotation” (RFQ)which seeks bids from private firms for the project. Under the terms stated by the White House, the contractor would have broad responsibilities in collecting information from White House related Web pages.

The RFQ for bids says the contractor is to “capture, store, [and] extract” information that will be transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for permanent storage. According to the White House proposal, the information involved will include the “capture of comments and publicly visible tags posted by users” on publicly accessible Web sites where the White House has established a presence.

www.cnsnews.com...

This is unbelievable. Just another notch in noose from a power hungry regime.

[edit on 2-9-2009 by jibeho]

[edit on 2-9-2009 by jibeho]

reply to post by jibeho


Uh,,, you guys are more reactive then I was with Bush which is an amazing feat

In fact many of those SNS have feedback that can be mined and distilled, probably a way
to gauge public opinion as it is done in the private sector.

Or

Eugenics (if you are GOP)

So people who coment on this video are suspect?

www.youtube.com...

Originally posted by The Great Day
So people who coment on this video are suspect?

www.youtube.com...

Possibly, but that's not the WHITE HOUSE YouTube site, is it? No. So that's irrelevent.

This is ONLY the White House sites and they have every right to capture and store anything anyone writes to their own sites.

From the source:

The document says that White House—which it refers to as the Executive Office of the President (EOP)--“currently maintains” seven sites. These are, www.facebook.com/whitehouse,
www.twitter.com/whitehouse,
www.myspace.com/whitehouse,
www.flickr.com/whitehouse,
www.youtube.com/whitehouse,
www.vimeo.com/whitehouse,
www.slideshare.com/whitehouse.

See the word "whitehouse" in all of those? Can you see it? Those are the sites this article talks about. I see nothing "unbelievable" about this at all. They have every right.

By the way, you all should know that ANYTHING you put on the Internet can be seen by other people. They can even capture and permanently archive it whenever they wish. Just FYI.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by Benevolent Heretic]

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


They do have the right to collect this info from these specific sights. However, It seems more like a scare tactic to keep the opposition from expressing their honest opinions to their "elected" employee. Just more fear mongering from this administration.

People will now think twice and will not express their opinions directly to the administration. So, what is left behind? All of the sights listed will be nothing more than an a love fest for Obama to ensconce himself in when he sees his plummeting poll figures.

Obama's handlers are merely trying to bolster the spirits of a narcissist.

You forgot Twitter!

And who cares! If the govt wants to spy on me telling my family that I had a good golfing round yesterday or that my son is almost ready to take his first steps I could care less! The first they could find out anyway with secret black helicopters or glancing at my financial records. The second they could use the spy cameras that are modeled after flies. Either way it's a complete waste of govt resources.

Originally posted by The Great Day
So people who coment on this video are suspect?

www.youtube.com...

Easily the best 6 minutes I have spent in the last month. Everyone should see that video.

Originally posted by jibeho
However, It seems more like a scare tactic

So, you're freaking out about something you've made up? An entity wants the ability to capture and archive anything written to their OWN websites (which anyone in the world can already do if they wish) and you make up a story that it's 'scary' and oppressive and then spread this suggestion to ... what? Create fear and suspicion in everyone?

Well, good job! Way to go!

Just more fear mongering from this administration.

You have no room to talk about fear-mongering, dude! There's nothing scary about what they're doing at all! YOU are spreading fear. YOU are the fear-monger.

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic


Open your eyes to what is going on. I'm not trying to scare anyone. Obama's administration is the instigator. The contract set forth to gather information is a 12 month contract that is renewable for up to seven years.

“This is a huge, secretive effort by the White House to capture web material far beyond what is required by the Presidential Records Act, which only requires archiving materials produced by the president and his staff at the Executive Office of the President,” said NLPC chairman Ken Boehm in a statement to CNSNews.com Monday.

“It’s not just presidential statements and proclamations, but anything people leave on a Web site becomes part of a permanent record potentially traceable to them,”

Nonetheless, the NLPC maintains that broad non-disclosure requirements for the contractor and the possible wholesale capture of all comments, including those critical of the president, are particularly troubling.

The anti-disclosure requirements are on page seven of the RFQ.

“The contractor also agrees not to publish, reproduce or otherwise divulge such information in whole or part, in any manner or form, nor authorize or permit to do so,” the RFQ says, “taking reasonable measures as are necessary to restrict access to the information, while in his or her possession, to these employees who must have the information to perform the work provided herein on a ‘need to know’ basis, and agree to immediately notify the Contracting Office in writing in the event the contractor determines, or has reason to suspect, a break of this requirement.

This is unprecedented. And YES it is a subtle away to intimidate people. Moving forward. Lets see if all of these sites will conspicuously disclose that any and all statements are being recorded and archived. The opposing viewpoints will PLUMMET. Mission accomplished by Obama.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by jibeho]

Originally posted by jibeho
The contract set forth to gather information is a 12 month contract that is renewable for up to seven years.

So what? They're allowed to do this. This is the president of the US. You can believe ANYTHING posted to the whitehouse websites has ALWAYS been archived for security purposes. It's just with the new sites (Twitter, YouTube, etc) they need someone to perform the function for those as well.

You (and CNS News - The RIGHT News RIGHT Now) are making a big deal out of NOTHING. This is the Internet, Holmes. This is not UNPRECEDENTED! This is the way it works. If you don't think the previous White House sites have been doing this FOREVER, then you're dreaming. But it wasn't "intimidation" then, was it? It was just our president protecting himself, his family and our country (cue "God Bless America"!) But now that Obama's doing what every president before him has done since Al Gore invented the Internet, he's intimidating people and quashing free expression.

I'm sorry, but it's a bunch of bull.

From whitehouse.gov

Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to Whitehouse.gov under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

[edit on 4-9-2009 by Benevolent Heretic]

Originally posted by king9072

Originally posted by The Great Day
So people who coment on this video are suspect?

www.youtube.com...

Easily the best 6 minutes I have spent in the last month. Everyone should see that video.

it was removed from that channel here is new link www.youtube.com...

I had just watched it and had to slip it in somewhere

sorry for off topic,

[edit on 5-9-2009 by The Great Day]