Interesting Items – 8/10 – Enemies dB
Enemies dB. The Obama administration, in an effort to start collecting information about political opposition is requesting supporters to forward anything that appears to be misinformation, disinformation, inaccuracies, and other things that misrepresent the health care legislation to a WH e-mail address: flag@whitehouse.gov Byron York did an analysis of the potential problems with such an effort and points out that this can quite easily be used to build a database (dB) of dissidents, opponents of Obama and the democrats. York notes that the WH is not covered by the Privacy Act, which means that they can legally keep all inbound traffic. The WH is also not covered by the Freedom of Information Act, which means that they cannot be forced to release any of this information. And finally they also covered by the Presidential Records Act, which will require them to keep everything received. Put all this together, and under existing law, the dissidents’ database will be both secret and permanent. Nicely done, eh? At weeks’ end, some talk show hosts suggested self identifying and sending everything you have to the e-mail address listed above. I would not suggest doing that. Why make their job any easier? On the other hand, we all get a lot of junk mail and I couldn’t think of a better home for all of it. The only thing to be careful of would be to make sure you don’t run afoul of federal anti-spam legislation.
More later — AG
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House, August 1, 1776.
Note: Interesting Items can be found also at the following locations: MatSu Valley News and the home page. Rod Martin’s The Vanguard site is also a long-time supporter of this column. Alex Gimarc is a long-time member of the Town Hall Conservative group.
