| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| O Staff Finds Novel Secure Comms in White House |
| 2009-01-22 |
| There were plenty of first-day glitches, too, as calls to many lines in the West Wing were met with a busy signal all morning and those to the main White House switchboard were greeted by a recording, redirecting callers to the presidential Web site. A number of reporters were also shut out of the White House because of lost security clearance lists. By late evening, the vaunted new White House Web site did not offer any updated posts about President Obama's busy first day on the job, which included an inaugural prayer service, an open house with the public, and meetings with his economic and national security teams. Nor did the site reflect the transparency Obama promised to deliver. "The President has not yet issued any executive orders," it stated hours after Obama issued executive orders to tighten ethics rules, enhance Freedom of Information Act rules and freeze the salaries of White House officials who earn more than $100,000. The site was updated for the first time last night, when information on the executive orders was added. But there were still no pool reports or blog entries. No one could quite explain the problem -- but they swore it would be fixed. One member of the White House new-media team came to work on Tuesday, right after the swearing-in ceremony, only to discover that it was impossible to know which programs could be updated, or even which computers could be used for which purposes. The team members, accustomed to working on Macintoshes, found computers outfitted with six-year-old versions of Microsoft software. Laptops were scarce, assigned to only a few people in the West Wing. The team was left struggling to put closed captions on online videos. Senior advisers chafed at the new arrangements, which severely limit mobility -- partly by tradition but also for security reasons and to ensure that all official work is preserved under the Presidential Records Act. Welcome to reality, kiddies. Enjoy! |
| Posted by:KBK |
| #4 Brahahaha.... looks like they took their own 'O' keys from the keyboard..... "What? What do you mean I can't just go in and update the Whitehouse website directly? "I just want to run this application I downloaded from download.com on the whitehouse network. No, of course I don't have the source code - the guy said it was really safe! Oh and I'll need these ports opened up in the firewall for it too. No I don't know what the're used for! I trust this guy!" |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2009-01-22 19:14 |
| #3 And they were probably so self-confident that they did not contact the folks already doing the job to get a heads up on process, software, ect. as everyone knows Republicans are unsophisticated dummies and any Democrat can take right over cold. (grin til it hurts) |
| Posted by: tipover 2009-01-22 18:41 |
| #2 Can you imagine the feelings of someone used to full mobility of the current tech having to use fully secured PC's! (grin some more) |
| Posted by: tipover 2009-01-22 18:34 |
| #1 And any changes must meet legal and security requirements! (grin) |
| Posted by: tipover 2009-01-22 18:31 |