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The Ignominy! No Facebook, No IM, and the Email's Down

White House tech years out of date; regulations are obsolete

By Gabriel Winant,  Newser User

Posted Jan 27, 2009 11:30 AM CST

(Newser) – Barack Obama’s White House staff has stepped into a time warp. The tech-savviest campaigners in history, who deployed email, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, et al, brilliantly to get their guy elected, now have to settle for an email system that goes down for long periods of time—as it was most of yesterday. The equipment is obsolete and staffers are forced to conform to Clinton-era rules that forbid outside email, IM, and all social media.


The administration may review those policies, but in the meantime the staff is struggling to relearn how to communicate using older technologies. “It took the British navy 150 years to carry lime juice on its ships after it was discovered that lime juice prevents scurvy," says Andrew Rasjef, a tech policy adviser. "Hopefully the White House will be able to make advances in the protocols faster than that.”

This undated image provided by President-elect Barack Obama's change.org website shows the front page of the website.
This undated image provided by President-elect Barack Obama's change.org website shows the front page of the website.   (AP Photo/change.org)
Obama staffers David Axelrod, left, and Robert Gibbs, center, check their BlackBerrys, and Rahm Emanuel, right, listens while Barack Obama speaks during a news conference in Washington, Jan. 9, 2009.
Obama staffers David Axelrod, left, and Robert Gibbs, center, check their BlackBerrys, and Rahm Emanuel, right, listens while Barack Obama speaks during a news conference in Washington, Jan. 9, 2009.   (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
In this July 7, 2008, file photo Democratic  Barack Obama checks his BlackBerry in St. Louis, Mo., prior to a conference call with supporters gathered at a rally in Charlotte, N.C.
In this July 7, 2008, file photo Democratic Barack Obama checks his BlackBerry in St. Louis, Mo., prior to a conference call with supporters gathered at a rally in Charlotte, N.C.   (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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Let me just get organized here and bring you up-to-date on a couple of announcements, the first of which [is] our apologies if you've e-mailed any of us in the last two and a half hours. Our e-mail system is not working so well. - Robert Gibbs, press secretary

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 6 comments
Guest
Feb 21, 2009 12:08 AM CST
So... fix it.
alienvv
Jan 27, 2009 10:36 PM CST
excuses started much earlier than I thought...All we hear lately is- how everything is going to be difficult, how we have to rebuild from zero, how we have to be reborn like different people, new responsibility etc...it sounds like we are all crap and BHO is here to clean us up...and we have to thank God for his arrival...
Guest
Jan 27, 2009 8:24 PM CST
We really are not talking about a computer Vs a typewriter here. Equipment can be changed in a matter of days. They are stalling because they are coming up short in a lot of area's that they thought they were "Ahead" on.

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