Obama Drops White House Snitch Line

Well, I have to admit this made me chuckle maliciously:

Following a furor over how the data would be used, the White House has shut down an electronic tip box — flag@whitehouse.gov — that was set up to receive information on “fishy” claims about President Barack Obama’s health plan.

E-mails to that address now bounce back with the message: “The email address you just sent a message to is no longer in service. We are now accepting your feedback about health insurance reform via: http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck.”

The “flag” service was introduced Aug. 4, with a White House blog post saying: “There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said at a briefing shortly after the service launched: “We're not collecting names from those e-mails. … [A]ll we're asking people to do is if they're confused about what health care reform is going to mean to them, we're happy to help clear that up for you. Nobody is keeping anybody's names.”

That's just another whopper from Obama's spokesmouth. Under US law any data colected in this fashion must be retained. And as for not keeping anyone's name, once the Obama Administration has you e-mail address its a simple matter for them to access your name, IP address and any other information you gave out connected with establishing your e-mail account - your home address, for instance, and even your credit card numbers.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote a letter to Obama raising privacy concerns about what the senator called an “Obama monitoring program.”

“I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward emails critical of his policies to the White House,” Cornyn wrote. “So I urge you to cease this program immediately.”

In a later statement, Cornyn said: “Of course the White House is collecting names. … [I]t is inevitable. Anyone with access to the flag@whitehouse.gov account has access to the names and email addresses that are collected in that account. … How are they purging names and email addresses from this account to protect privacy?”

Well, Senator Cornyn, I don't think they are going to be deleting anything.Aside form it being illegal, it's obvious that just as Obama has a database of his supporters, he now has a database for his 'enemies' list.And oh yeah, part of that enemies list is a whole slew of people from Nigeria and other places with very interesting business propositions for the Prevaricator-In-Chief....culled from my e-mail spam blocked list and duly sent to flag@whitehouse.gov as 'fishy'. From a public computer, of course.

You know me, anything I can do to help.