Sunday, August 9, 2009

flag@whitehouse.gov

flag@whitehouse.gov

You may be aware that the White House wants people spreading misleading or false reports about their health insurance proposal to be reported to flag@whitehouse.gov. This all smells of Nixon's "Enemies List," and the efforts some years back by the FDA to discredit opponents of fluoridating water. (I think the opponents of fluoridation were in the wrong, but the government should persuade, not demonize opponents.)

It turns out that it may be not just a bad thing, but actually unlawful. My friend David Hardy, an attorney who spent some years working in the belly of the beast (Interior Department subsection) says that there's a specific statute that makes this unlawful:

5 US Code §552a(e)(7) commands that any Federal agency

"(7) maintain no record describing how any individual exercises rights guaranteed by the First Amendment unless expressly authorized by statute or by the individual about whom the record is maintained or unless pertinent to and within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity;"

Persons posting to the web or sending emails are exercising First Amendment rights. I can't see how gathering this information is expressly authorized by statute, nor within the scope of an LE activity. It doesn't get much clearer than that.

...

I'd say there are glaring Privacy Act violations here. And the penalties, per §552a(i) include fines of up to $5,000, not only for gathering forbidden data, but for disclosing it or maintaining an undisclosed system.

One of my readers (a supporter of Obamacare) thinks that I am unfairly characterizing flag@whitehouse.gov--that the White House isn't making lists, but just keeping track of what mischaracterizations of the health care plan are out there, so that they can fight the errors. Hey, maybe that's true. But if in 2004, the White House had a email address where you were encouraged to report people making false claims about the Iraq War, would the same crowd have assumed that there were no bad motives or actions that might result?

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