The World According To Missygirl

'Fishy' info on health care

As WND reported, the Obama administration has made several efforts to collect information about citizens in the past. The White House announced a program Aug. 4, pleading with people around the nation to forward to a White House e-mail address anything they see "about health insurance reform that seems fishy."

Scary chain e-mails and videos are starting to percolate on the Internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to 'uncover' the truth about the president's health insurance reform positions.

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 e-mails 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 e-mail or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, demanded that President Obama either halt the "snitch" program or define how he would protect the privacy of those who send or are the subject of e-mails to the flag@whitehouse.gov e-mail address.

"I am not aware of any precedent for a president asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White house for pure political speech that is deemed 'fishy' or otherwise inimical to the White House's political interests," the Texas senator wrote in a letter to Obama.

"By requesting that citizens send 'fishy' e-mails to the White House, it is inevitable that the names, e-mail addresses, IP addresses, and private speech of U.S. citizens will be reported… You should not be surprised that these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection system."

'Compelling need' for cookies

WND has also reported that the Obama administration has announced plans to lift a government ban on tracking visitors to government websites, and potentially, collect their personal data through the use of "cookies" – an effort some suspect may already be in place on White House sites.

A ban on such tracking by the federal government on Internet users has been in place since 2000, however, the White House Office of Management and Budget now wants to lift the ban citing a "compelling need."

This screenshot shows computer cookies collected on WhiteHouse.gov and Recovery.gov

In fact, according to the Electronic Privacy and Information Center, federal agencies have negotiated agreements and contracts with social networking sites like Google, YouTube, SlideShare, Facebook, AddThis, Blist, Flickr and VIMEO to collect information on visitors for federal websites. All of these private companies are known to have agreements with federal agencies, but the public has never seen them.

In public comments submitted to the Office of Management and Budget, EPIC notes it has obtained documents that show federal agencies have negotiated these contracts with the private sector in violation of "existing statutory privacy rights." Those agencies include: Department of Defense, Department of the Treasury, and the National Security Agency.

There are suspicions the White House is already involved.

According to Obama "technology czar" Vivek Kundra, the "compelling need" driving this major policy reversal is the administration's desire to create "more open" government and to "enhance citizen participation in government."

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# posted by Missygirl : 8:18 AM