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August 09, 2009
Obama Collecting "Fishy" information is Illegal
White House Move to Collect 'Fishy' Info May Be Illegal, Critics Say
The White House has been under fire since posting a blog on Tuesday that asks supporters to e-mail any "fishy" information seen on the Web or received electronically.
The White House strategy of turning supporters into snitches when they see "fishy" information about the health care debate may run afoul of the law, legal experts say.
"The White House is in bit of a conundrum because of this privacy statute that prohibits the White House from collecting data and storing it on people who disagree with it," Judge Andrew Napolitano, a FOX News analyst, said Friday.
"There's also a statute that requires the White House to retain all communications that it receives. It can't try to rewrite history by pretending it didn't receive anything," he said.
"If the White House deletes anything, it violates one statute. If the White House collects data on the free speech, it violates another statute."
Napolitano was referring to the Privacy Act of 1974, which was passed after the Nixon administration used federal agencies to illegally investigate individuals for political purposes. Enacted after Richard Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal, the statute generally prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.
The White House has been under fire since it posted a blog on Tuesday that asked supporters to e-mail any "fishy" information seen on the Web or received electronically to flag@whitehouse.gov
"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there," the blog said, adding that "since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help."
The blog was posted partly in response to a video posted on the Web that claimed to show Obama explaining how his health care reform plans eventually will eliminate private insurance.
The video, featured on the Drudge Report, strung together selected Obama statements that the White House said were taken out of context.
The White House said it wanted to be made aware of "fishy" comments about its health care plan because it wants to set the record straight. But critics called White House move an Orwellian tactic designed to control the health care debate.
"This is a very troubling attempt to stifle the free speech of Americans who have the constitutional right to express their opinion and concerns about health care," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. He called on Obama to repudiate his blog.
"This move is an attempt to intimidate those who have legitimate concerns about the health care plan," Sekulow said. "And, worse, it turns the White House into some sort of self-appointed 'speech police.' This new White House reporting program strikes at the heart of the First Amendment and has no place in this important debate about health care."
Sekulow said he imagines that opponents of mandatory abortion coverage are engaging in what the White House considers "fishy" speech and should be reported.
"What the White House is touting is absurd," he said.
But Napolitano said the White House probably cannot be sued because of sovereign immunity, unless someone was harmed by what the government did with the records. But that's unlikely, he said, because the person would probably be unaware of the harm.
"That's a silent violation of your right to privacy," he said.
The ACLU said in a statement to FOXNews.com that the White House blog is a "bad idea that could send a troublesome message."
But the organization added, "While it is unclear at this point what the government is doing with the information it is collecting, critics of the administration's health care proposal should not fear that their names will end up in some government database that could be used to chill their right to free speech."
The White House Thursday denied that it was playing "Big Brother."
"Nobody is collecting names," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "We have seen, and as I've discussed from this podium, a lot of misinformation around health care reform, a lot of it spread, I think, purposefully."
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who has called on Obama to end the program, rejected the White House explanation.
"Of course the White House is collecting names," he said, arguing that anyone with access to the e-mail account has access to private information.
"The question is not what the White House is doing, but how and why," he said. "How are they purging names and e-mail addresses from this account to protect privacy? Why do they need the forwarded e-mails, names, and 'casual conversations' sent to them instead of just the arguments that they want to rebut?
Asked by FOX News whether the White House was using the blog post as a way to expand the e-mail list for the administration and Obama's political arm, Organizing for America, Gibbs said the two are "not in any way connected" and repeated that the White House is not collecting names.
Pressed about the program's goal, Gibbs said it was to clarify for everybody what the misinformation is, adding that's not a new tactic.
"When you make a mistake in your report, sometimes I e-mail you," Gibbs said to FOX News' Major Garrett. "Occasionally, I call. Sometimes I just throw something against the wall. Occasionally, it's all three."
Garrett asked why it's necessary to ask so many people to e-mail the White House.
"All we're asking people to do is, if they're confused about what health care reform is going to mean to them, we're happy to help clear that up for them. Nobody's keeping anybody's names. I do have your e-mail. ...Maybe that's because I assume future mistakes. But I'm not going to say that," Gibbs said, drawing laughter.
"But nobody's collecting information," he added. "Everybody is trying to give people only the facts around what we all understand is a very complicated issue."
Obama Spy Program Violates .Gov Domain Guidelines And Privacy Act of 1974 – Updates And Who To Contact
Mr. Ellis was very cordial, mentioning he was up until 9:00 pm last night after being inundated with emails. I would like to extend many thanks to my readers who emailed me after contacting Mr. Ellis. Your words of support were encouraging. Don’t letup and keep sending those emails, but please be very cordial as Mr. Ellis is a very likable gentleman. Mr. Ellis will be the person who will re-write the guidelines if necessary.
Mr. Ellis informed me the legal office of the GSA Federal Acquisition Services (FAS) has been contacted. The White House site will not be taken down, which should come as no surprise due to its importance in providing vital information to the public. However, the use of the whitehouse.gov blog is in violation of the guidelines.
The White House may be asked to either remove the offending material of put up a disclaimer which states the site in question violates .gov second level domain guidelines by allowing for campaign content – in this case the campaign to pass health care legislation. Mr. Ellis is not a lawyer and I have not yet received a reply email from him, which I requested during our interview. However keep your eyes on the site dotgov.gov website which is the GSA FAS official website for any announcements. Again, keep up the pressure.
Macon Philips, the man behind whitehouse.gov and the website calling for the turning in of citizens is also known as the White House Director Of New Media:
Obama's dissident database could be secret -- and permanent
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
The White House request that members of the public report anyone who is spreading "disinformation" about the proposed national health care makeover could lead to a White House database of political opponents that will be both secret and permanent, according to Republican lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are examining the plan's possible implementation.
On Monday, White House director of new media Macon Phillips posted a note on the White House web site complaining of "disinformation about health insurance reform." "These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation," Phillips wrote. "Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov
In a letter to Obama Tuesday, Republican Sen. John Cornyn wrote that, given Phillips' request, "it is inevitable that the names, email address, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported to the White House." Cornyn warned the president that "these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program."
"I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward emails critical of his policies to the White House," Cornyn continued. "I urge you to cease this program immediately."
Senate Judiciary Committee lawyers studying the proposal say that although there is no absolutely settled law on the matter, the White House plan is likely not covered by the Privacy Act, which prohibits government agencies from keeping any records "describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained." Therefore, it appears the White House can legally keep records of the emails and other communications it receives in response to Phillips' request.
Those lawyers also point out that the White House is not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, which means it would not have to release any information on the plan to members of the public who make a request.
In addition, the lawyers say the collected emails likely will be covered by the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve and maintain its records for permanent storage in a government database. Phillips' request suggests that whatever information the White House receives on health-care reform "disinformation" will be used to further the goal of passing a national health-care makeover, which is, of course, one of the president's main policy initiatives. Such material, and whatever the White House does with it, would qualify as presidential records. Only after more than a decade would such records be publicly available.
"So the White House, whether by design or accident, has requested information from the public that will become 'records' under the Presidential Records Act, yet would be impermissible for any government to otherwise collect under the Privacy Act," writes one Judiciary Committee source. "Where were the lawyers in all of this? What is their legal basis for authorizing the collection of these records?"
Linda Douglass, head of communications for the White House Office of Health Reform, says the White House is "not compiling lists or sources of information" on opponents of health care reform. But if "fishy" information is indeed collected, as Phillips' request suggested, the laws involved mean that the information obtained by the White House could not only be secret but permanent. A dissident database, in whatever precise form it ultimately takes, could be around for a long time to come.
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Wild Thing's comment..........
Obama wants so much information on us, yet won’t release anything on Obama himself.
Deleting the data would be not only violating a law about retention, but it would be destroying evidence for the crime of collecting the information in the first place.
The ACLU said in a statement to FOXNews.com that the White House blog is a “bad idea that could send a troublesome message.”
From the ACLU! Must be an impeachable offense???
Posted by Wild Thing at August 9, 2009 07:47 AM
Comments
It truly is illegal. What has this Nation come to? I swear there are people where I work who would turn me in in a heartbeat. They are so pro-Obama. They are so pro-change. I work in an insurance company-guess what? We may lose our jobs if government gets its mitts into us. So many want the government to just take care of them from cradle to grave and I don't know why.
Thank you President Nixon for this law.
Posted by: Lynn at August 9, 2009 08:48 AM
they'll just spin this and misdirect people's attention with double rainbows and unicorns...nothing will come out of this unfortunately.
I saw Judge Napolitano speaking about this several times...he made a good case for how this is illegal.
Funny thing is I think people are abusing it, turning themselves in, turning in the lying Dems, etc....dilute it and it will become too unwieldy to be effective, although with the story of the guy who had a run in with Secret Service over a blog post that was turned in, it's not completely out of the question that they will try to use this info for intimidation purposes.
Posted by: Eden at August 9, 2009 09:07 AM
My thought on this, is first, his supportor/Thugs are all illerate and can't read in the first place so how would they even know if there was any 'fishy' out there. They are all going by what their misfit leaders have told them and that is taken as Gospel.
Second, if they could read, and that's still up for debate, how many of these loyal bamabots actually took the time to read the bill. Even obama says he hasn't read the bill.
So what they are doing is compiling an enemies list ala Nixon. The first one's to the re-education camps. Which, by the way the National Guard has created a new MOS, Internment camp specialist.
Wasn't the 1972 Privacy Act enacted to protect Hippie Protestors ? Why would anyone think, that today, any conservative would be free from being chased down and arrested. Trumped up charges or not...We can't even voice our opinion on Health Care, for god sake, without being threatened.
So as NashuaDan said, we had all better Live, Breath, and fight Free or surely we will all die in this shit obama has created.
Posted by: Mark at August 9, 2009 09:24 AM
I can't believe the apathy towards the impending loss of freedom, it's like the nation is full of zombie islamists and it's allah's will.
"Now this end is called the thagomizer ... after the late Thag Simmons." ~ Gary Larson
Posted by: Jack at August 9, 2009 11:03 AM
I wonder if they have ACORN/SEIU types going thru conservative blogs like this compliling lists of anti-obama commenters. If so, then they should know me pretty well. I hate obama.
Too many people make the assumption that the obama group abides by the laws. No it doesn't. The obama apparatus uses the laws against others and for itsself but does not abide by those laws.
Posted by: TomR at August 9, 2009 03:03 PM
You all are GREAT, thank you so much.
Posted by: Wild Thing at August 10, 2009 12:10 AM
