Obama White House Has Secret Plan To Harvest Personal Data From Social Networking Websites
By Ken Boehm
Created 08/31/2009 - 19:07

White House photoNLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites.

The information to be captured includes comments, tag lines, emails, audio, and video. The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”

In the course of investigating procurement by the White House New Media office, NLPC discovered a 51-page solicitation of bids that was filed on Friday, August 21, 2009. Filed as Solicitation # WHO-S-09-0003, it is posted [1] at FedBizzOps.com. Click here to download a 51-page pdf of the solicitation [2].

While the solicitation specifies a 12-month contract, it allows for seven one-year extensions. It specifies no dollar cap. Other troubling issues include:

    extremely broad secrecy terms preventing the vendor from disclosing to the public or the media what information is being captured and archived (page 7, “Restriction Against Disclosure”)

    wholesale capturing of comments by non-White House staff on publicly accessible sites

    capturing of content of any type (text, graphics, audio, or video)

    capturing of comments by both Obama critics and supporters, with no restriction as to how the White House would use the information.

This is the third controversy involving the White House internet operations in less than a month. First, Obama’s New Media operation asked supporters to send information about critics of the White House health care effort to a White House email. This provoked a storm of criticism and the White House retreated. Then large number of people complained of getting email spam from the White House supporting the President’s health care position.  Again the White House was forced to back down.

Now the same people at the White House are at it again with an ambitious plan to harvest huge amounts of information from the web and specifically social networking sites.

Given the White House’s recent abuse of its New Media operations, this huge, new secretive program is yet another sign that this Administration is at best indifferent to privacy rights and at worst prepared to violate civil liberties for political purposes.

Perhaps anticipating negative reaction to the invasiveness of the plan, a justification is provided in a Q&A. section of the solicitation. Question #9 reads:

    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.

Of course, this interpretation of the Presidential Records Act is so expansive that virtually any communication mentioning the president or the Administration could become subject to collection and archiving under the Act. This is not out of an “abundance of caution,” but out of an over-abundance of power. President Obama should make sure that this plan goes no further.

300: THE ABRIDGED SCRIPT
By Rod Hilton

FADE IN:

EXT. SPARTA

PERSIAN MESSENGER PETER MENSAH approaches SPARTA and demands to see the king, GERARD BUTLER.

PETER MENSAH
I am a messenger for Rodrigo Santoro. He wants a gift of water and earth from you as a sign that you fall under his rule.

GERARD BUTLER
The men and women of Sparta submit to no ruler.

PETER MENSAH
But they all submit to you. You're their king. And you submit to a bunch of inbred priests that talk to gods.

GERARD BUTLER
I shall kill you where you stand for pointing out how silly the premise is!

PETER MENSAH
Whoa, hold on. You're going to kill a messenger? For basically insulting your pride? We've already established we kill newborn babies if they don't look great - killing messengers because your dick is small won't exactly get the audience on our side.

GERARD BUTLER
Um, it's for FREEDOM.

PETER MENSAH
Oh, well if you're going to use the word "freedom" then that changes everything. Clearly you're the good guys now.

GERARD kills the PERSIANS, sentencing his people to fight a battle they cannot win. This is HEROIC, rather than JUVENILE.

EXT. HOT GATES

GERARD BUTLER, DAVID WENHAM, VINCENT REGAN, and 297 EXTRAS PISSED OFF THEY SPENT SO MUCH TIME IN THE GYM ONLY TO GET A NON-SPEAKING PART all watch as the invading army of CGI invaders renders itself closer and closer.

Suddenly, a MUTANT ANDREW TIERNAN appoaches.

MUTANT ANDREW TIERNAN
Gerard, let me fight by your side. All I ever get are sh!t parts on TV shows. I'm finally in a movie, please give me some screen time.

GERARD BUTLER
No. Even though you know about a secret passage that will allow the Persians to defeat us, I've decided once again that my pride is more important than my intelligence. f**k off.

MUTANT ANDREW TIERNAN
Geeze, what a dick. You're sure you're the good guys in this story?

GERARD BUTLER
Freedom!

DAVID WENHAM
Freedom, f**k yeah!

VINCENT REGAN
Freedom is good! And since we use the word freedom, it means we embrace it! Freedom freedom!

A METRIC f**kTON of PERSIANS attack, but they are killed. The scenes go in and out of slow-motion stylistically as pixelated blood decorates the fake landscape.

VINCENT REGAN
If video game makers are trying so hard to make their games "look like movies" why are we trying so hard to make our movie look like a video game?

GERARD BUTLER
We're going for the "brainless thick-headed macho asshole" demographic

DAVID WENHAM
Have you seen our costumes? I'm pretty sure we're going for the "closeted homosexual" demographic.

After some more violence, RODRIGO SANTORO decides to talk

RODRIGO SANTORO
Bow before me, your new god. I have divine powers, and I shall spare you if you submit to me.

GERARD BUTLER
We will never embrace your silly mysticism. We much prefer our own, with all the inbred mutant guys at the top of the mountain and the naked oracle chick.

RODRIGO SANTORO
You will pay for this! I will burn all Greek writings! Nobody will ever know you existed!

GERARD BUTLER
Greek? I'm Greek? Why the f**k have I been doing a Scottish accent for the entire movie?

RODRIGO SANTORO
For that matter, why are most of my Persian fighters caucasian?

Predictably, MUTANT ANDREW TIERNAN tells RODRIGO about the secret passage. Persians surround the Spartans. There is some more fighting as the audience is doused with TESTOSTERONE.

VINCENT REGAN
(dying)
Man, this whole plan was really, really stupid.

GERARD BUTLER
(dying)
Freedom!

VINCENT REGAN
Did I say stupid? I meant brave and inspirational! Freedom!

END

Copyright 2007 Rod Hilton. All Rights Reserved. This document may be reproduced verbatim (allowing censorship and translation) as long as the author's name is preserved and this notice is either preserved or referenced.

Nuclear Expert Killed By 120ft Stairwell Fall
Graham Fitzgerald, Sky News Online

A British nuclear expert has fallen to his death from the 17th floor of the United Nations offices in Vienna.

The 47-year-old man died after falling more than 120ft to the bottom of a stairwell. He has not been named.

He worked for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, an international agency charged with uncovering illicit nuclear tests.

A UN spokesman in the Austrian capital said there were no "suspicious circumstances" surrounding the man's death.

Police said no other person was believed to have been involved. No suicide note has been found.

Four months ago another UN worker also believed to be British fell from a similar height in the same building, it has been reported.

The latest incident happened on Tuesday as the United States, France, Russia and Iran held talks nearby about Tehran's nuclear programme.

The sheriff said the decision to use SWAT team force was justified because the father was a "self-proclaimed constitutionalist"

World Net Daily

SWAT officers invade home, take 11-year-old at gunpoint. Cops demand boy go to doctor because of fall during horseplay

Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family's home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak.

The boy's parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy's father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves.

Someone, apparently the unidentified paramedic, called police, the sheriff's office and social services, eventually providing Leoniak with a report that generated the magistrate's court order to the sheriff's office for the SWAT team assault on the family's home in a mobile home development outside of Glenwood Springs, the father, Tom Shiflett, told WND.

WND calls and e-mails to Garfield County Social Services were not returned, and Leoniak, who earlier served as a water court clerk/referee, also was not available.

Sheriff Lou Vallario, however, did call back, and told WND he ordered his officers to do exactly what the magistrate demanded.

"I was given a court order by the magistrate to seize the child, and arrange for medical evaluation, and that's what we did," he said.

According to friends of the family, Tom Shiflett, who has 10 children including six still at home, and served with paramedics in Vietnam, was monitoring his son's condition himself.

The paramedic and magistrate, however, ruled that that wasn't adequate, and dispatched the officers to take the boy, John, to a hospital, where a doctor evaluated him and released him immediately.

The accident happened during horseplay, Tom Shiflett told WND. John was grabbing the door handle of a car as his sister was starting to drive away slowly. He slipped, fell to the ground and hit his head, Shiflett said.

He immediately carried his son into their home several doors away, and John was able to recite Bible verses and correctly spell words as his father and mother, Tina, requested. There were no broken bones, no dilated eyes, or any other noticeable problems.

The family, whose members live by faith and homeschool, decided not to call an ambulance. But a neighbor did call Westcare Ambulance, and paramedics responded to the home, asking to see and evaluate the boy.

The paramedics were allowed to see the boy, and found no significant impairment, but wanted to take him to the hospital for an evaluation anyway. Fearing the hospital's bills, the family refused to allow that.

"This apparently did not go over well with one of the paramedics and they started getting aggravated at Tom for not letting them have their way," a family acquaintance told WND.

"The paramedics were not at all respectful of Tom's decision, nor did they act in a manner we would expect from professional paramedics," the acquaintance said.

So the ambulance crew, who also could not be reached by WND, called police, only to be told the decision was up to the Shiflett familiy.

The paramedics then called the sheriff's office, and officers responded to the home, and were told everyone was being cared for.

Then the next day, Friday, social services workers appeared at the door and demanded to talk with John "in private."

They were so persistent Tom ended up having to get John out of the bathtub he was just soaking in, to bring him to the front porch where the social workers could see him, the family reported.

Then, following an afternoon shopping trip to town, the family settled in for the evening, only to be shocked with the SWAT team attack.



"He was refusing to provide medical care," the sheriff said.

However, the sheriff said if his own children were involved in an at-home accident, he would want to be the one to make decisions on their health care, as did Shiflett.

"I guess if that was one of my children, I would make that decision," the sheriff said.

But he said Shiflett was "rude and confrontational" when the paramedics arrived and entered his home without his permission.

The sheriff also admitted that the injury to the child had been at least 24 hours earlier, because the fall apparently happened Thursday afternoon, and the SWAT attack happened late Friday evening.

Officials with the Home School Legal Defense Association reported they were looking into the case, because of requests from family friends who are members of the organization.

"While people can debate whether or not the father should have brought his son to the ER – it seems like this was not the kind of emergency that warrants this kind of outrageous conduct by government officials," a spokesman said.

Tom Shiflett said when John was evaluated by the physician, "they didn't find anything wrong with him."

He said the paramedics never should have entered his home, but they followed his wife in the front door when she came in.

"My attention was on my son," Shiflett said.

He said the SWAT team punched a hole in his door with a ramrod, and the first officer in the home pointed a gun right in the face of Tom's 20-year-old daughter.

"I don't know where social services ever got started, or where they got their authority," he said. "But I want to know why we have something in this country that violates our rights, that takes a parental right away."

He said he saw a multitude of injuries in Vietnam, and while he recognized that his son needed to be watched, he wasn't willing to turn his child over to the paramedics.

With 10 children, most of them older than John, it's not as if he hasn't seen a bruise or two, either, he said.

"Now I'm hunting for lawyers that will take the case … I'm going to sue everybody whose name was on that page right down to the judge," he said.

Mike Donnelly, a lawyer with the HSLDA, told WND the case had a set of circumstances that could be problematic for authorities.

"In Doe V. Heck, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals held that parents have a fundamental right to familial relations including a liberty interest in the care, custody and control of their children," he said.

He also said many social services agencies apply "a one size fits all approach" to cases, regardless of circumstances.