Would-be Obama aides must disclose Web posts, Facebook profiles

[bertine]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10097448-38.html

A nine-page questionnaire requires applicants to list--and if possible, provide copies of--all "posts or comments on blogs or other Web sites" they have ever made. Also required are "aliases" or nicknames used on those sites.

Translated into English, this means that President-elect Obama wants to know far more about you than his predecessors did. That requirement would force applicants to disclose information about Facebook and MySpace pages, profiles posted on dating Web sites, and even what was posted on Web sites like CNET and YouTube that allow readers to append comments.

I wouldn't even know where to start.

Comments

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

A nine-page questionnaire requires applicants to list--and if possible, provide copies of--all "posts or comments on blogs or other Web sites" they have ever made. Also required are "aliases" or nicknames used on those sites.

Is Obama from the stone age? Does he not understand how much our generation is online? How would listing, let alone printing, all this crap be possible?

WTF?

[lisianthia.livejournal.com]

Seems a little ridiculously invasive to me. Why not tap their phones and require transcripts of everything they say in a day too?

[bertine.livejournal.com]

Exactly! How would you make sense of my twitter comments because you can really follow a converstation on there. I used to belong to this site where there was a "Babble" board. I would have no idea how to get the comments on that to make sense even if I could get access to them all.

Think about it, I bet he would even want your ebay purchase, netflix comments and amazon.com reviews. I would never be able to do this.

Re: WTF?

[bertine.livejournal.com]

That would make more sense to me. I have been online since the early 90s. 15 years of what I have said online. I suppose I could find all my old usenet postings

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

NO ONE our age w/computer access could do this.

Re: WTF?

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

I was on BBSes. does that count as internet?

Re: WTF?

[bertine.livejournal.com]

I don't know. How would you even find that information?

Re: WTF?

[sithlet.livejournal.com]

At that point, I'd just figure I could provide every alias I'd ever used and tell them to do their own sleuth work.

Re: WTF?

[bertine.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I don't even use any alias other than "bertine" and this would take them forever.

[sithlet.livejournal.com]

A nine-page questionnaire requires applicants to list--and if possible, provide copies of--all "posts or comments on blogs or other Web sites" they have ever made. Also required are "aliases" or nicknames used on those sites.

I think that excludes you having to dig up stuff from 10 years ago. If it were me, I'd assume that meant providing a full log of things you still use (livejournal, myspace, facebook, etc.) and providing any aliases you've used in the past. Still seems invasive, but I can't imagine the extensive background checking and spywork DIDN'T happen before this (in that, I mean I don't think it's prying any more than they might have in the past, they're just being upfront about it). Providing leads for this stuff is likely just making their jobs a little easier. I'm sure they'd find out if one of the potential applicants were a "former" KKK member, but if their online alias was directly linked to some supremacist message boards, it'd make the job less time consuming.

[theophania-79.livejournal.com]

dude. i was so never get hired by obama. there goes my plans to lewinsky obama.

[sterlingphoenix.livejournal.com]

Just go alphabetically.

[hutman.livejournal.com]

Well thats me out of the running for a job with Obama so! Just take a read through this!

[mesawyou.livejournal.com]

Holy crap.

I bet it would be REAMS OF PAPER of I actually printed that shit out.