White House Plans to Collect Data from Social Networking Sites

The National Legal and Policy Center claims to have uncovered a secret White House plan to collect data from private citizen's social networking websites.

Have you posted a video of yourself on You Tube? Do you have pictures of your kids on Facebook? How about rants of your political views, or maybe a few choice words aimed at a policy or injustice you have witnessed all played out on MySpace? All of these may be subject to collection and filing at the archives of the White House according to the National Legal and Policy Center. In a report released Monday the NLPC stated that it uncovered a government contract up for bid which specifies the collection of information from Social Networking mediums. The White House Office of New Media request for contract is deemed by some as necessary in order to Comply with Presidential Records Act. The White House Office of New Media was set up to make the government more technologically approachable and to aid in the transparency of government. From the Solicitation:

The purpose of this Statement of Objectives (SOO) is to obtain the necessary services to ensure that content published by the Executive Office of the President (EOP) on publicly-accessible web sites is archived in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA), that information posted on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence is archived in accordance with the PRA, and that all archived information is securely stored and provided to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for historical preservation, in accordance with the PRA.

The Executive Office of the President has began to maintain more of a presence in social networking websites and the technological savvy it has exhibited is hailed as an attributing factor to the success of Obama's Presidential campaign. The EOP and other government agencies have taken the executive order of the President detailing a requirement for transparancy and ran with it all the way to the internet. One resource being utilized is called Govloop. Govloop.com has acted like a Facebook for government workers and has helped those workers utilize social networking websites like Twitter. The Washington Times also reported about Govloop:

Enthusiasts have created a weekly radio show podcast, made hundreds of YouTube videos, produced more than 2,000 blog posts, shared more than 5,000 pictures and even taken turns profiling a GovLoop member of the week and project of the week.

With this information in mind it is interesting to note what the recent government contract performance objectives. The contract specifies that the contractor is to "capture and store content of any kind, including text, graphic, audio, and video, in any existing file format." from "content published by EOP on publicly-accessible web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA maintains a presence." This will also cover non publicly-accessible websites. NLPC is concerned by the language of the contract which would require the contractor to capture and store content submitted by non-EOP persons. The center is further concerned about language which is perceived to keep this information secret from the general public. While the provision of secrecy on Page 7 of the document titled, 'restriction against disclosure' is considered by the NLPC as too broad others have maintained it is procedure to include in every government contract. In the Q&A Section of the document the Office of New Media attempts to explain the reason for archiving non-EOP personnel commentary.

9. The Presidential Records Act does not require the storage or archiving of non-EOP content, as such is there a specific reason as to why the content provided on EOP related websites in the form of comments is included in these archiving procedures?

Answer: The PRA includes in its definition of presidential records content ―received‖ by PRA components and personnel. Out of an abundance of caution, we are treating comments made by non-PRA personnel on sites on which a PRA component has a presence as presidential records, requiring them to be captured or sampled.