The man who built a high-tech campaign out of the concept of "change" is already bringing Internet technology into his administration. President-elect Barack Obama has announced plans for a presidential YouTube channel, along with plans for thorough social network and blog screenings as part of potential staffers' background checks. If you've so much as left a questionable comment on a blog somewhere, you might be disqualified. Think you could pass?
High-Tech Addresses
First up, the YouTube channel. The Obama administration revealed plans Friday to broadcast the weekly presidential addresses to YouTube -- the first time such addresses have been delivered in a video format. (President Bush put audio of his speeches on the White House Web site, but video was never included.) The Webcasts will begin this weekend with the Saturday Democratic address and will continue once Obama takes over the presidency. The videos will also be posted on Obama's transition Web site, Change.gov. Question-and-answer sessions and interviews are expected to eventually be offered as well.
Anyone who aspires to high office should assume that there is no such thing as private electronic communication. Period. If it's not on somebody's backup, the NSA is reading it.
As for drunken party pics -- I don't want my public officials to be the kinds of people who GET drunk at parties, so I figure if there are any drunken party pics of you on the Web, you deserve the consequences.
by Ernest Adams (not verified) on 11/17/08 at 1:10 pm |reply
Privacy?
I don't really see this as a big scary thing. It's called "vetting" and it's supposed to be done before hiring someone to do a government job. Also known as "due diligence."
This last administration has done a lot of surveillance on ordinary people. If Obama keeps *that* going, I'm going to be less than happy. But we could use a more honorable set of public servants.
And yes, BTW, I think (I hope?) it's not too difficult to find people who haven't left a trail of nasty remarks behind them when they thought they were anonymous. *That's* called character.
by Keith (not verified) on 11/17/08 at 1:19 pm |reply
But sometimes we forget that
But sometimes we forget that our politicians are human. The idea that our politicians must prepare for office essentially from birth is relatively new. There are good people with unusual pasts, families, and friends who are now unable to run for office because of the stringent tests that the American people put politicians through. Perhaps these things have less influence on a person in office than the American media and public like to think.
by Kevin (not verified) on 11/17/08 at 1:24 pm |reply
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
Surviving Windows is easier than you think… MKS offers the power of an integrated all-in-one environment and provides you with the Power of UNIX on Windows Learn More
Brought to you by:
Free books
We have 5 copies of these two new books to give to some lucky readers. The deadline for entries is November 30, 2009.
AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.
In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases
built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC
technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability
and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.
On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.
jfruh
pasmith
Esther Schindler
mikelgan
David Strom
sjvn
Sandra Henry-Stocker
Quick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.
It's really very simple.
Anyone who aspires to high office should assume that there is no such thing as private electronic communication. Period. If it's not on somebody's backup, the NSA is reading it.As for drunken party pics -- I don't want my public officials to be the kinds of people who GET drunk at parties, so I figure if there are any drunken party pics of you on the Web, you deserve the consequences.
Privacy?
I don't really see this as a big scary thing. It's called "vetting" and it's supposed to be done before hiring someone to do a government job. Also known as "due diligence."This last administration has done a lot of surveillance on ordinary people. If Obama keeps *that* going, I'm going to be less than happy. But we could use a more honorable set of public servants.
And yes, BTW, I think (I hope?) it's not too difficult to find people who haven't left a trail of nasty remarks behind them when they thought they were anonymous. *That's* called character.
But sometimes we forget that
But sometimes we forget that our politicians are human. The idea that our politicians must prepare for office essentially from birth is relatively new. There are good people with unusual pasts, families, and friends who are now unable to run for office because of the stringent tests that the American people put politicians through. Perhaps these things have less influence on a person in office than the American media and public like to think.