Magistrate Judge John Facciola issued an emergency order Thursday for the preservation of White House emails. In his groundbreaking opinion, he definitively affirms that White House email messages are documents of major historical importance.
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Presidential Technology
As Internet-based Presidential communication expands radically during the Obama administration, we’re tracking email, social networking, peer-to-peer networking, security risks, and more. Read the articles below for the latest in-depth analysis of this important topics.
By David Gewirtz | January 16, 2009 | Presidential Technology
By David Gewirtz | January 14, 2009 | Presidential Technology
Moving is never fun and when moving day is only six days away, the last thing you need is a new project. Unfortunately, the outgoing White House IT staff now has a new project – collecting and preserving White House email.
By David Gewirtz | January 14, 2009 | Presidential Technology
President-elect Barack Obama is apparently still getting used to the limitations the Presidency will place on his life , including restrictions or even a ban on his cherished BlackBerry device, which he says he’s “still clinging to.” So what if Barack kept his BlackBerry?
This important Open Letter makes the case that when Mr. Obama and his team enter the White House on January 20, they will be walking into an active crime scene – and they need to treat it as such.
The crime is an admitted violation of the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act by the Bush administration. Gewirtz contends there is forensic evidence that needs to be gathered before it’s lost in the flurry of incoming activity.
By Ken Robinson | January 7, 2009 | Presidential Technology
I am writing in response to David Gewirtz and his Open letter to President-elect Barack Obama on the White House email controversy. Mr. Gewirtz makes the argument that the computers located in the White House – including the Executive Office of the President, the West Wing, and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building – should be treated as a crime scene.
By David Gewirtz | January 7, 2009 | Presidential Technology
The crime is an admitted violation of the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act by the Bush administration. Gewirtz contends there is forensic evidence that needs to be gathered before it’s lost in the flurry of incoming activity.
By John Oram | September 22, 2008 | Online Safety & Scams, Presidential Technology
Wednesday morning, the phone started ringing here it didn’t stop for the next two days. Members of the media were feeding on the news that Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account may have been hacked, and since our own David Gewirtz is one of the nation’s leading experts on the issue of Presidential email, he was being asked to comment.
This following article by John Oram of the IT Examiner is the result of one such interview.
By David Gewirtz | July 21, 2008 | National Security, Online Safety & Scams, Presidential Technology
Another senior government official has had his BlackBerry stolen by another foreign intelligence agency. But this time, it’s not an American official. According to the U.K.’s The Sunday Times, a senior aide to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had his BlackBerry stolen by Chinese intelligence agents while on a trip to China back in January.
This latest report is particularly juicy because the senior Downing Street aide got caught in what’s probably the world’s oldest intelligence ploy, the “honeytrap,” an intelligence scam where an attractive female spy is used to lure a government official into some form of compromising position.
Returning to the story of our bonking Brit and his BlackBerry bandit. Just how much trouble did this aide’s problematic peccadillo get him into? Of more concern, how much damage did our international man of mystery’s “special branch” do to Britain’s security – and, by extension, the security of her allies?
By David Gewirtz | July 14, 2008 | National Security, Online Safety & Scams, Presidential Technology
This latest Special Report spotlights a surprising lack of government record-keeping oversight, along with critical cyber-security gaps, both revealed in last week’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of the National Archives and Records Administration and four key government agencies: Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Trade Commission, and HUD.
The GAO audit was provided to the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Unfortunately, while the GAO described certain record-keeping and computer management practices at these various agencies, they may not have fully understood how the practices they documented would lead to troubling security flaws at the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Trade Commission, and they certainly didn’t point them out explicitly for the Committee to investigate. This report provides those details.
This latest Special Report spotlights the increasingly apparent examples of massive negligence within the White House Office of the Chief Information Officer, this time resulting in evidence that the White House has irrevocably broken at least two key federal laws: the Presidential Records Act and the Federal Records Act.
The Special Report also explores how ranking members of the House Oversight Committee have virtually guaranteed that none of White House’s email problems will be resolved until the end of the next administration, four years after George W. Bush leaves office.
Candidate for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Letters
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DAVID GEWIRTZ is a CNN contributor and editor-in-chief of the ZATZ magazines. He is a recipient of the Sigma Xi Research Award in Engineering and was a candidate for the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Letters. David serves as USSPI's executive director.
