What do YOU think ?

[tombogan03884]

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_08_30-2009_09_05.shtml#1251913030

There is a debate in the blogosphere about the scope of a contract
   that has been sent out for bidding. Ed Morrissey [1]sets the stage:

     Todayâs rumor of presidential overreach starts at the [2]National
     Legal and Policy Center and the Drudge Report, which has launched a
     slew of e-mails about official spying on social-networking sites.
     The NLPC found an RFP from FedBizOpps, the site that publishes all
     opportunities to do business with the federal government, that
     offers a contract for a company to collate data from the Internet.
     Is Big Brother upon us?

   Morrissey says that the National Legal and Policy Center has misread
   the [3]proposal. I read the proposal last night and I think it's
   ambiguous. Morrissey correctly points to this language that suggests a
   narrow (and probably proper) scope for the project:

     The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture,
     store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published
     by EOP [Executive Office of the President] on publicly-accessible
     web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on
     publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA
     maintains a presence, throughout the term of the contract. The
     contractor shall if possible, capture, store, extract to approved
     formats, and transfer content published by EOP on non-public
     websites. The contractor shall include in the information posted by
     non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP
     maintains a presence both comments posted on pages created by EOP
     and messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites.
     Publicly-accessible sites may include, but are not limited to
     social networking sites.

   But Morrissey doesn't mention [4]this language, which points to a
   broader enterprise:

     5. Performance Objectives . . .

     (G) Capture of comments and publicly-visible tags posted by users
     on publicly-accessible websites on which an EOP component subject
     to the PRA maintains a presence. Vendor must be able to either:

     (i) Capture all comments posted to a list of websites provided to
     vendor; or

     (ii) Capture a sample of comments posted to a list of websites
     provided to vendor, according to a sampling methodology that will
     be provided to vendor and approved by EOP.

   The proposal is not artfully written. While the language says that a
   vendor must be able to EITHER collect all comments on the website OR
   capture a sample of comments, in context I think they mean that a
   vendor must be able to do both tasks (at least where a full collection
   would not be so large as to be impractical).

   A literal reading of the rest of these two passages of the proposal
   would seem to say that the vendor "must be able to . . . capture all
   comments posted on a website" and that the collected information must
   "include . . . both comments posted on pages created by EOP and
   messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites." Saying that the
   collection of ALL comments on the website must include comments to and
   from the EOP does not limit the information collected to that required
   under federal law.

   Where does this leave us?

   I think Morrissey is right about the purpose of the contract bid -- to
   collect comments to and from the White House on social networking
   websites (particularly pages set up and run by the White House). It
   would not be fair to say that the White House has a plan to harvest
   private information in a general way from social networking sites. Yet
   the National Legal and Policy Center is also right in a sense because
   the proposal seems to require the vendor to be able to "Capture all
   comments posted to a list of websites," not just the ones appropriate
   to gather.

  Of course, requiring a vendor to have the capability to collect ALL
   comments on Facebook and Twitter -- or a random sample of them -- does
   not mean that the White House will use that power. But it is
   explicitly seeking to obtain that technological capability.

References

   1. http://hotair.com/archives/2009/09/02/does-obama-plan-to-spy-on-social-networking-sites/
   2. file://localhost/files/RFQ_WHOS090003.pdf
   3. file://localhost/files/RFQ_WHOS090003.pdf
   4. file://localhost/files/RFQ_WHOS090003.pdf

[Kid Shelleen]

This is just another blatant opportunity for the Obama Administration to abuse its power and to ignore the rights that are granted to us by the Constitution, a document that they obviously hold in great distain.

[Pathfinder]

This is just another blatant opportunity for the Obama Administration to abuse its power and to ignore the rights that are granted to us by the Constitution, a document that they obviously hold in great distain.

Why do you think they are moving so quickly - they know the American public is slow to rouse, and by the time the sheeple really are awake, the damage - a lot of damage - will already be done.