You'd probably need to have a provision for files transfered by IM, though, if only to determine who had access to them.

I'm not sure about this. This could be a case where the right regulation actually has some unintended and unduly burdensome effects.

It's not necessarily the end of the world if the President can't use IM and BlackBerry.

Why don't we just go ahead and record their phone calls too, then? The rationale behind the legislation makes a lot of sense, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired.

If the goals of the PRA are worth pursuing, it's not clear why opening up the enormous loophole potential of IM is a good idea. Sure, what most people use IM for is equivalent to "talking," but that's a social tendency, not a limitation of the technology. Using IM would certainly be an easier alternative to, say, creating a redundant GOP.org e-mail system.

Would you (or others) have demanded Bush's blackberry records during the various "scandals" of the Bush administration?
What about when he fired the US Attorneys? If Bush had a Blackberry, would everyone have demanded to see them?

I think so. This law is silly, but those who have spent the last 8 years begging for every email out of the White House (or celebrating the hacking of Sarah Palin's private email) also look a little silly trying to save Obama's Blackberry.

fuck, they should just accept that all their communications will become part of the public record and deal with it. Fuck the lawyers.

if the IM records are released 5 years after the admin is done, so what?

If you're used to working in an office with IM, twitter, and the like, giving them up would be a real pain. Email is not a good catch-all solution.

Twitter-style communication lets you post transient questions/announcements to entire groups of people, and IM lets you have a quick back and forth while still doing other work at your desk. It's ridiculous that our top government officials should be denied these tools.

I think Ezra's right, as long as no computers keep a log, IM should be considered like talking. Unfortunately, you'd also have to deal with the issue of cut and paste. It might be worth setting up dedicated computers with more restricted software for IMs and chats.

I'm with Ezra. One of the hallmarks of Obama's campaign was its efficiency in the use of modern communications and collaboration tools. I'd like to see this same effective approach in the White House, and it's silly to apply the standards of an antiquated law to new media. Change the law, by all means, and find the appropriate level of public accountability in a 21st century world. The etiquette and protocols of IM's use are not as far advanced as those of email, so it may take a bit to sort all this out. I'm on the side of categorizing IMs along with telephone conversations. More bureaucracy does not equate to more accountability. Let's be smart about this, as Ezra suggests.

You cannot have it both ways. If my memory serves me right, this law was put into by the Dems, after Watergate. Now the dems want it removed because there is a Dem president. This is just like Pelosi wanting to change the Contract with America, that she supported when the Repubs had the power.

Like the old saying goes, "Whets good for the goose, is good for the gander".

TheBad: learn to read.

Why don't we just go ahead and record their phone calls too, then?

Not to complicate things, but
Vonage is promoting its "voicemail to text message" service, which turns a voicemail left at your Vonaged home phone to a text message which shows up on your PDA.

Voice data? Computer data? It's never too early to choose sides.

I generally agree with Ezra: give them the tools, but keep them transparent and accountable.

It seems like a lot of people are missing Ezra's point - it's not eliminating the keeping of e-mail records he's proposing, simply a change to the law about records-keeping that reflects advances in technology. That's probably overdue... but I tend to agree the implications do bring up the whole question of what we're hanging onto here. Do we need every "will b back at 2" text message? I'm thinking no... but allowing texts/blackberry e-mails to disappear will encourage using them to evade disclosure.

As an assistant, I was initially nervous about my boss going to a Blackberry, especially since he was (aside from being a great boss) somewhat easily distracted, let's say, by messaging Instead I have to say it helped enormously - it allowed for virtual continuous communication and more ability to adjust things, like scheduling, on the fly. I can understand why Obama doesn't want to lose his; not just the "bubble" nature of the Presidency, but the practical enhancements the technology adds to his work. We were bound to meet this moment. Now it's time, probably, for the law to catch up to the technology (something that also underpins revisiting things like FISA, evetually).

Go ahead and archive the blackberry material. The President has so much power that the need for accountability outweighs privacy. If Nixon had not been so egotistical as to tape his own conversations, we would have a much less accurate picture of his presidency and personality than we do, and history has been very well served by this.

There is a whole swath of special interest in this country who have a vested interest in cutting the president of the United States off from the people who elected him, the people who he ultimately represents and works for.

We need look no further than the current administration to see the quintessential example and recognize the consequences of allowing the leader of this nation and the free world to be cut off totally from the reality of everyday people and the world around him. The current president is completely out of touch, and that's exactly what those special interests and corporate masters designed when they put their lackey in the White House. It is perhaps the greatest threat to democracy that exists, and we have all borne witness to the consequences of allowing it to happen.

Barack Obama realizes that allowing this to happen constitutes the very antithesis of democracy, and I believe he understands that it is absolutely vital that the president remain in touch with his people in the wider world.

The fact is, when you are president, you are in charge, and you make the rules for your own conduct. No president has the right to allow others to dictate to him how he will govern, and how he will inform himself. And that doing so is an abdication of your responsibility as president.

This is why I and many others chose Barack Obama, because he has the guts to stand up to the establishment, and the intelligence to recognize when others are trying to control him and his access to WE THE PEOPLE.

Fight the Power Barack, fight the power!

One of the smarter things that Congress could do at the same time is to create an continuing body to address the issue of mid- and long-term archiving.

When you hear of the need to retrieve messages from individual Outlook profiles on individual staff computers, that's a recipe for unaccountability.

Now, there are problems with declaring particular technologies off-the-record, because they can then be potentially used for communication laundering the way the GOPlings used its off-books email accounts.

I suppose the comparison here is startup vs. corporate, where corporate tech is almost always more conservative than startup tech, on account for the need to homogenise and cover one's rear, but White House tech is more retrograde than most.

Obama should speak, text, and act as if the entire world is watching the whole time. If he thinks he gets to retain a private life after Tuesday, he signed up for the wrong job.

If you don't want it known, then don't say it, write it, e-mail it, or text it. That is as simple as at gets. I agree with Mike, if you wanted to keep your life private, then don't work in the public sector.

Ezra has a good argument. Maybe too good. If we should treat some White House electronic records like speech, why not corporate electronic records as well?
I know that everybody on this thread will immediately think of at least six dozen reasons why they are different. And I will concur with at least three dozen of them. But I don't want to give those corporate bastards a ghost of an argument. Too much corporate crime had been unprosecutable, because it relied on state-of-mind evidence that never existed before email. Without direct evidence of state of mind, defense lawyers could usually come up with some ex post justification that generally worked with a jury.
Now, they can't do this very easily, because they are confronted with the executives' own words. Admittedly, aggressive white-collar prosecutors had been rare in the era of Bush. But those who were aggressive (Spitzer, Morganthau et al) had a gold mine of evidence. I don't want to endanger it, by admitting to a trope of "records are just like oral speech", in order to make life a bit easier for the West Wing.

Treat them as writing, and if 22nd-century historians want to slog through a terabyte of "out 2 lunch, back at 1:30", let them. Until then, they should be sealed unless a court has a need to inspect them - the existing rules for written memos are probably fine.

But you definitely don't want to encourage a no-law zone to stuff illegal behavior into. (If you could make everyone wear a wire and record their on-the-job conversations with similar confidentiality/eventual release provisions that'd probably be good too, but it seems impractical.)

we have affordable and reliable technology to archive all IM and email and twitter communication of the entire Whitehouse.

just archive and release it. All business that happens there is our business.

I'd go so far as to advocate installing recording equipment in the oval office. The lesson of Nixon has shown that we are all better off with full disclosure.

They need to act as if everything they do in office will be accurately judged by future generations.

we don't need any more GOP.org evasions.