Posted on 01/22/2009 10:07:59 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
By Anne E. Kornblut
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 22, 2009; A01
If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.
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.
"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.
In many ways, the move into the White House resembled a first day at school: Advisers wandered the halls, looking for their offices. Aides spent hours in orientation, learning such things as government ethics rules as well as how their paychecks will be delivered. And everyone filled out a seemingly endless pile of paperwork.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If you go to most facilities of Samsung corporation which produces many of gadgets these boys are so fond of, there is no outside connection to Internet. Only well-monitored intranet. I am sure WH has bigger secrets to keep than Samsung in terms of importance. You cannot causally chat over Internet or do e-mail. If you do, you are an easy prey to trained hackers in Russia or China. This is not about being behind time.
If they want to have a more casual life-style, resign from the current job at WH. Then they will do all computer stuffs they want.
I am afraid these guys would casually pass on top secrets knowingly or unknowingly. Liberals have track record of lax sense of security. Maybe that characterization is too charitable. "Casual disregard" is a more apt expression, I think.
The article reminds us a bunch of rookies are answering the phones at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when bad things happen.
Its called Operational Security, get used to it.. I can imagine Obama’s kids slipping and taking pictures around the White House, posting it on Facebook, and exposing national secrets or security.
Awww-—too bad. They won’t be able to access porn or play WOW at work.
It's the White House, and no matter how much you'd like to update that facebook page or send a happy message to your friends on myspace.com, there's certain things you can't do.
Unlike when you had the internship at Cosmopolitan, the matters that you're dealing with are closely held secrets with ramifications if they fall into the hands of our enemies.
Sorry, but it's time to join the big boys and get to work.
Owl_Eagle
“When the stock market crashed,
Franklin Roosevelt got on the television
and didn’t just talk about
the princes of greed, he said,
‘Look, here’s what happened.’"
-Slow Joe Biden
Note: they didn’t find the equipment trashed, pornograpthy scrawled on the walls, food flung against the drapes.
I figure what they will do is set up a sort of Shadow Government in an office in the D.C. area with all the gadgets to command their internet IN YOUR FACE troops. A few vague consulting firms etc etc. They’ll just send word via carrier pigeon or Obama Acolyte.
It comes from being spoiled consequence-free live for me in the moment adolescents with no thought of the big picture. To say they feel they’ve gone to the computer stone age says they are dangerously ignorant about security.
My thought too, so they had to have something else to complain about.
This complaint just outs them for being ignorant of the current need for secure technology. Even I have to take measures to make my system safe, my personal information private.
For a supposedly savvy group, these folks are a bunch of numb nuts.
Couldn’t agree more. And they’re not even smart enough to keep that to themselves, the absolute worst mistake an ignorant person can make.
They will do it themselves just to trash Bush.
spoiled little Techies... will need Soros to help bring them up to this century. Welcome to working in the Gov’t, brats!
I bet they will use WH funds to make new programs, like the Clintoons, that will have the data fed to DNC systems to allow them to maintain their constant campaigning but will constitute a significant breach in our Nation's security.
Remember what the DRM found out Palin had used an outside email account from her office?
Kornbult is uninformed or biased. Probably both.
That is a given. Drudge may have a scoop which will eclipse Monica Gate.
These idiots have never had a real job. Facebook and nearly every other thing is blocked in the corporate world. We - America - are screwed.
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