New Obama Staffers Pissed They Can’t Use Macs
The WaPo has an article bemoaning how the most intelligent tech-savvy kids in the world, the staffers who got Obama elected by using MySpace and Facebook, have to stop using Macs when working out of the Executive Office of the President (EOP). They complain that they now have to use Windows XP and are not allowed to access Facebook or other social networking sites that are blocked because of numerous security risks. They are trying to hack outbound past the content filtering proxies to use their own email address accounts, which, by the way, is a violation of the law. But the story of the One must be spread via constant Twitter posts dammit!
From the WaPo here:
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.
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.
By late evening, the vaunted new White House Web site did not offer any updated posts about President Obama’s busy first day on the job,nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver.
One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos.
Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility — partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act.
Several people tried to route their e-mails through personal accounts. And officials in the press office were prepared: In addition to having their own cellphones, they set up Gmail accounts, with approval from the White House counsel, so they could send information in more than one way.
The liberals were apoplectic over the fact that the Bush administration were using their own communications methods. But now that they have the power, technological rules and constraints are something to be tossed aside to allow the One’s message to ring ’round the world.
Remember how Obama’s camaign site was hacked? Cyber security at the EOP is about to get a whole lot worse.
