"No greater challenge faces our society today than ensuring that each one of us can maintain his dignity and his identity in an increasingly complex, centralized society. Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, galloping inflation, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. Our party must be based on the kind of leadership that grows and takes its strength from the people." --Ronald Reagan
It appears that the White House is ignoring the law and the Constitution as is reported in today's Washington Times, that the Obama people are spying on Americans that use the Internet!
And Democrats and the ACLU thought the Patriot Act was bad!!
The White House is collecting and storing comments and videos placed on its social-networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube without notifying or asking the consent of the site users, a failure that appears to run counter to President Obama's promise of a transparent government and his pledge to protect privacy on the Internet
Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the White House signaled that it would insist on open dealings with Internet users and, in fact, should feel obliged to disclose that it is collecting such information.
"The White House has not been adequately transparent, particularly on how it makes use of new social media techniques, such as this example," he said.
The proposal issued Aug. 21 calls for a contractor to "crawl and archive" social-networking Web sites where the White House maintains an official presence on seven networks: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and Slideshare.
The collection will include the comments, tags, graphics, audio and video posted by users who don't work for the White House. Big Brother looms ever larger now that Obama controls the reigns of power!!
The collection will include the comments, tags, graphics, audio and video posted by users who don't work for the White House.
"It includes any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the president or members of his staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President," the law says.
This despite the fact that Mr. Obama signed a memo in January stating that his efforts to maintain an open government would be "unprecedented" and "ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration."
Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, called for congressional oversight of the practice of collecting data.
"Given the administration's disappointing secrecy in other contexts, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee encourages Congress to conduct oversight to ensure compliance with the law, maximize transparency and protect individual privacy," Mr. Buttar said.
According to the law, the term "presidential records" means documentary materials "created or received by the president, his immediate staff or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise and assist the president, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President."