[403] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Ludicrous: President Obama Likely To Be Cut Off
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (privacy@vortex.com)
Sun Nov 16 14:08:46 2008
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Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:45:28 -0800
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Ludicrous: President Obama Likely To Be Cut Off From Most E-Mail
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000471.html
Greetings. The New York Times is reporting today on the high
probability that President Obama will be forced to essentially give
up using e-mail for most purposes, due to concerns over the
implications of Records Act requirements
( http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/us/politics/16blackberry.html ).
Now that we're about to have a President who is tech-savvy in the
Internet age, to enforce conditions that strip him of this key
communications tool is a ludicrous situation.
To consider every e-mail to be a public record in the context of
public interest and governmental transparency makes no more sense
than would requiring that every phone call made by such officials
also be recorded and be available for virtually unlimited future
scrutiny.
While it can certainly be argued that situations arise where access
to archived e-mail contents is valuable when investigating and
adjudicating various situations -- in both the commercial and
governmental worlds -- fears of inappropriate large scale e-mail
disclosures may now be seriously undermining the use of this
technology in both contexts, with the likely result being a
detrimental reduction in often crucial communications.
E-mail is no longer a hi-tech novelty, it has become as fundamental
to our world as physical mail and the telephone -- arguably now even
more so than those two older technologies.
It's time that we rethink how records reporting policies,
regulations, and laws may seriously restrain and damage useful and
important communications. We should work toward striking some sort
of *balance* to avoid creating situations where our leaders and
others find themselves stripped of a crucial communications tool,
over fears that their e-mail use doesn't include relevant and
appropriate privacy protections.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com or lauren@pfir.org
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
- People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
- Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
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