Legal Research

No Phones, No Lights, No Motorcar, Not a Single Luxury …

… Like Robinson Crusoe, it’s primitive as can be.  And, according to the Washington Post, it’s the White House.

Actually, it’s not that bad.  But the article makes it sound like the White House is a sort of technological black hole:

“Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts. What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.”

Note to Obama team: It’s for real now.  Everything you do, say, type, write, initial, doodle, whatever, will be scrutinized and preserved in perpetuity.  And not just by friendlies.  That’s why your boss had such a hard time convincing the security geeks to let him have his BlackBerry.

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on January 22, 2009 (boomark / email).